Castello di Barolo historical timeline

The 10th century, and a caution. No document records the castle's foundation. The tradition places it in the 10th century, when Berengario I permitted the local feudatory to raise a defence against the frequent raids of the Hungarians and the Saracens. Of that structure little remains: the keep, and nothing else.

The 13th century. The first written record is a deed of cession by the lords of Marcenasco in favour of the comune of Alba, which within a few years handed it to the Falletti. They restructured it significantly and made it the fixed residence of a branch of the house. This is why a second source can call the same building 13th-century without contradicting the first: it is the century the castle enters the written record and becomes Falletti.

1544. The castle was sacked on the orders of the French governor of nearby Cherasco, in the course of the long wars of the period. Giacomo and Manfredo repaired the considerable damage and took the opportunity to improve it. What their 16th-century restoration produced stayed substantially unchanged for three hundred years.

1814. The Falletti moved their principal residence to Palazzo Barolo in Turin, and the castle became a country house.

Silvio Pellico. Among the guests of the last Falletti years was the writer Silvio Pellico, presented to the marchesa by Cesare Balbo after his decade of imprisonment in the Spielberg. He became a close friend, a trusted adviser, and the administrator of the Falletti library. He and the marchesa would spend long days together between this castle and the castello della Volta, reading and talking.

1864. Juliette Colbert, the last marchesa Falletti, died. The castle passed to the Opera Pia Barolo, which rebuilt it heavily — the works profoundly altered the structure — and turned it into the Collegio Barolo, a school whose purpose was to give boys without money a chance to study. It ran until 1958.

1970. The comune of Barolo bought the castle, thanks above all to a public subscription to which many contributed generously. The village owns it still.

2007. The castle joined the circuit of eight Castelli Doc, with the castles of Grinzane Cavour, Serralunga, Govone, Magliano Alfieri, Roddi, Mango and Benevello. It also belongs to the Castelli Aperti circuit of the Basso Piemonte.

2010. The WiMu opened on 13 September.

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