Did you know that there are several secret passages inside the castle, some of which lead down to the valley? Did you know that in each room there is a…
History often merges with legend in Castelbrando. Among curiosities, noble enterprises and folk tales..
Between feats of great warriors and folk legends, every corner of the castle could tell a story..
We share some..
If you want to discover everything but everything about the castle, you can enjoy a guided tour.
Did you know that there are several secret passages inside the castle, some of which lead down to the valley?
Did you know that in each room there is a different coat of arms, testifying to over 520 years of marriages between the counts of the castle and other noble families?
Did you know that CastelBrando uses the same radiation heating system as the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg?
Did you know that the centuries-old Cedar of Lebanon in the garden of the castle is the highest Christmas tree in Italy each year?
Did you know that in the sixteenth century the castle housed sumptuous parties, to which the Queen of Cyprus Caterina Cornaro was often a guest?
Did you know that the water that flows to CastelBrando is the same canalized and used by the Romans?
Did you know that at CastelBrando there are still several torture instruments, like the Pillory and the Pit of knives?
In the strategic X Regio, a border region of the Italian peninsula, the Romans made the first connection between the Latin and the Germanic world, the Via Claudia Augusta, which went up from the Adriatic to the Danube.
Initially created as a route of conquest and defense, the road was completed in 46 AD by emperor Claudius Augustus with different aims: it had to favor the exchange of goods and knowledge with the Germanic area, contributing to a civil development.
However, given its strategic position – as a stronghold for possible incursions from the north – several castrums were erected along the road, namely wooden and stone fortifications that served as a camp for the legionaries and fixed forts for the control over the land.
In the most upstream part of the current site where CastelBrando stands, one of particular importance was erected, with 2/3 m thick walls about 30 m high, which according to assessments housed about 200 soldiers.
The castrum was equipped with prisons and roman baths, whose remains are still visible today in the Spa area of the castle.
During the archaeological excavations, in the courtyard appeared the ancient pipelines that, through an ingenious hydraulic system, took water from 3 very pure sources, which still feed the castle today.
Another remain of the castrum still present at CastelBrando is the well well-kept roman oven.
In medieval times, the stones of the castrum were finally used to erect the main tower of the castle.
In 1847 the nineteenth-century writer Pietro Beltrame, fascinated by the manor, set the romantic story of Gilberto and Amelia within the mighty medieval walls of the castle of the village of Cison. Gilberto, a proud and generous knight, was madly in love with Amelia. This couple lived peacefully when one day Gilberto was recalled by faith to take part in one of the Crusades in the Holy Land.
Amelia accepted the separation with submission and sewed the red cross on her husband’s dress with her own hands. At the time of living as a token of love, Gilberto divided the necklace of his beloved into two parts and left.; Amelia would have keep her promise until the necklace be back.
The crusaders fought for a long time and Amelia waited for years for her husband to return but with the passing of time hope began to fade. During a hunt, a bear made her horse go wild, risking to make her fall, when she felt a strong hand taming the steed. It was Isoardo, a young lord of the nearby village of Mura.
One look and it was love at first sight. Yet they did not meet for a long time, until the news came from the Holy Land that Gilberto was lying on the battlefield mortally wounded. Shocked by it Amelia went out on horseback aimlessly and was joined by Isoardo who, by mistake, had received the will of Gilberto delivered by two crusaders.
Shortly after Isoardo and Amelia were married. On the day of the wedding a mysterious knight appeared with the visor lowered, who was asking for hospitality. He was invited to the table and there he began to tell the story of a necklace and a promise … Amelia suddenly understood and fainted. Gilberto threw the glove and the necklace on the table as a sign of defiance, blinded by jealousy and longing for revenge. In vain the two lovers tried to escape the fury of the knight.
The escape ended at the lake of Revine where the two lovers found death. Their bodies were no longer found; they still lie at the bottom of the lake.
An ancient noble family, most probably from Brandenburguese origins, the Brandolini went down to Italy to fight alongside the Byzantines. They are later remembered for participating in the first Crusade (1096 – 1099 AD), an achievement after which the symbol of the black scorpions was added to the family crest.
The history of the Brandolini is intertwined with that of the castle in 1436 when the fortress and the annexed possessions are donated by the Republic of Venice to Brandolino IV and to his companion of arms Erasmo da Narni, named Gattamelata, for their courage in battle fields.
The famous Gattamelata, promoted to Captain General of the Serenissima army, then leaves the fortress to continue fighting, despite being almost seventy years old. Thus, Brandolino becomes the count of the castle and his family will own it for 523 years until 1959.
Besides him, other members of the family distinguished themselves as condottieri: from his son Tiberto to the frightening Gianconte Brandolini, who succeeded in the early years of the 16th century to seize several victories from Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg.
Among the family’s men of art, Antonio Maria Brandolini, Gianconte’s nephew stands out. He transformed what was once a medieval fortress into a sixteenth-century palace, building a majestic structure whose facade still represents one of the most beautiful views of CastelBrando.
Two centuries later, Guido VIII Brandolini instead thought of a theater that is now in the Renaissance wing of the castle, intended for dance parties and musical performances, but also used as a place of cultural and civil training for the subjects. He then entrusted the architect Ottavio Scotti with the creation of the imposing eighteenth-century portion.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Brandolini are instead remembered for having maintained an almost feudal regime with the peasants employed by them. According to the rules of sharecropping, peasants had to share part of their harvest with the powerful family, owner of all the possessions along the valley. Only in 1958 the land was put up for sale so that those who had cultivated it for a lifetime could take possession of it.
This is the reason why most legends handed down orally depict the counts as cruel and negative persons.
For the inhabitants of the valley the person that more than any other was the occasion for fantasies and rumors, was that of the count. Brave man of arms and undisputed master of the feoff, with right over things and people, he generated mixed feelings: from gratitude for the favors granted, to reverence from admiration to fear.
It is said that the tenant farmers and tenants of the count wore the best clothes to be received at the hearing and that on his passage they were forced to perform the bow, on pain of corporal punishment.
But there were also those who remember with gratitude the count: not only did he keep the children of some villagers in boarding school but he tried to meet their basic needs, donating corn and beans to allow them to survive.
The negative voices were instead magnified by those who had been wronged or harassed. For example, it is still said today that the count imposed his Ius Primae Noctis on his tenant farmers: after the wedding ceremony, the beautiful girls of the county were taken from their homes and taken to the Lord’s alcove, on the first floor of the castle, to pass the wedding night with him. Often these meetings ended badly for the unfortunate girls or for the husband who dared to question this right. It is said that one night a woman refused to give in to the lusts of the Lord who cut her head off and then threw it in the trapdoor built inside the alcove for such eventualities. The head came out halfway down the mountain and began to roll off the ridge screaming her innocence. The screams were so loud and lacerating that they could be heard throughout the valley. It seems that this passage really existed so much so that it is said that Countess Serra used it to escape the German siege during the First World War.
The count was so feared that, among the villagers, there were those who claimed to have seen the count wandering on a white steed on nights of full moon in search, perhaps, of his lost soul.