page_title: Verrès Castle
section_title: Decline and recovery in the nineteenth century
hierarchical_section_title: Verrès Castle / History / Decline and recovery in the nineteenth century
caption_attribution_description: English: Engraving of Verres castle by Celestino Turletti
context_page_description: Verrès Castle is a fortified 14th-century castle in Verrès, in the lower Aosta Valley, in north-western Italy. It has been called one of the most impressive buildings from the Middle Ages in the area. Built as a military fortress by Yblet de Challant in the fourteenth century, it was one of the first examples of a castle constructed as a single structure rather than as a series of buildings enclosed in a circuit wall.
  The castle stands on a rocky promonitory on the opposite side of the Dora Baltea from Issogne Castle. The castle dominates the town of Verrès and the access to the Val d'Ayas. From the outside it looks like an austere cube, thirty metres long on each side and practically free of decorative elements.
context_section_description: At Rene de Challant's death without male heirs in 1565, his property passed to his son-in-law Giovanni Federico Madruzzo who was married to his daughter Isabel, beginning a long legal conflict with other male members of the Challant family, once again based on the Salic law, under which Isabel could not inherity her father's property.
  Therefore, the House of Savoy took direct control of Verrès castle, turning it into a look out and military garrison, but in 1661 Duke Charles Emmanuel II had the armaments of the castle dismantled and transferred (along with those of Saint-Germain Castle) to Fort Bard, which was in a more strategic position for control of Valle d'Aosta. Verrès was abandoned.
  In 1696, the legal dispute between the heirs of Isabel de Challant and the Challant family finally came to an end and the castle returned to the Challant family. The castle remained their property until the extinction of their house in the nineteenth century, but it was no longer inhabited and fell into ruin. The strong exterior walls held up well, but the wooden roof was removed as punishment for not paying taxes, leaving the top floor exposed to the elements.
  After a series of transfers it was finally acquired from Alfredo d'Andrade in 1894 by the Italian state in 1894 and placed under the Superintendency for monuments of Piedmont and Liguria, which carried out restoration work. After the Second World War, the castle was declared a Monument of Italy and came under the authority of the Regione Valle d'Aosta which rebuilt the stone casing in the 1980s. A final restoration was undertaken in 1994.
  In 2004 the castle was closed to allow strengthening and adjustment of the structure. Since it was reopened in 2007 it has been open to guided tours.
caption: Verrès castle in a nineteenth century engraving by Celestino Turletti
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