Bardineto Castle: A Medieval Fortress in Italy
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 3.9
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page6 sections
History
Bardineto Castle is a ruined medieval fortress in Bardineto, Italy, built around the thirteenth century by the Del Carretto marquises, a feudal family that controlled territories in Liguria and the Bormida valley. The castle and the first fortified settlement stood along routes linking Albenga with Toirano and the Ligurian coast with the lower Piedmont, giving the Del Carretto family a position from which to control and protect Bardineto and this part of the Val Bormida.
The Del Carretto Lordship
A notarial act from 1268 records both the castle and the settlement. It states that Giacomo Del Carretto, a marquis who had died in 1265, left his rights over the fortress and the people of Bardineto to his son Antonio Del Carretto. In 1355, an imperial diploma issued by Charles IV of Luxembourg, the Holy Roman Emperor, recorded the castle and settlement during the formal confirmation of Giorgio Del Carretto as lord of Bardineto and other territories in the Bormida valley.
Bardineto and its surrounding territories remained under Del Carretto control, apart from brief periods of Genoese republican rule in 1713 and Savoyard rule in 1735. This political continuity ended with French domination at the close of the eighteenth century.
The Battle of Loano
During the Battle of Loano in November 1795, French forces fought Austro-Piedmontese troops in the area. Austro-Piedmontese soldiers were entrenched inside Bardineto Castle, and the fighting demolished much of its defensive curtain. The castle’s strategic military function ended in 1795.
Bardineto Castle has been designated Italian national heritage since 1937.
Remains
The surviving site consists of a ruined castle-fortress set slightly above the original thirteenth-century fortified settlement. Its principal defensive structure was a high curtain, meaning a continuous fortified wall enclosing or protecting a castle or settlement. The castle had sixteen sides, giving the fortress a compact, many-sided plan.
Castle Fortress
Twelve sides of the high defensive curtain were demolished during the Battle of Loano in 1795. The remaining fabric therefore preserves only part of the former sixteen-sided enclosure, while the destruction of the wall explains the castle’s ruined condition and its present form as a fragment of the earlier fortress.
Fortified Settlement
The castle occupied an elevated position above Bardineto’s original fortified settlement. The medieval defensive wall that once enclosed and protected the settlement has left no surviving trace, so the castle remains the principal physical evidence of the fortified site described in the medieval records.
