The Roppolo castle is an ancient manor located in Roppolo in Piedmont.
The particular strategic position of the site where the castle stands had meant that already in the third century AD. a fortification had arisen there, later used as the base of the current building. After having belonged to several nobles of the area, in 1225 the castle became the property of the Bichieri counts, a powerful and wealthy Vercelli family, who transformed the now dilapidated hillside fortification into a real medieval castle, which proved to be very useful for family during the struggles between Guelphs and Ghibellines.
The castle, as well as the nearby village, then passed into the hands of the Visconti Lombards in 1315, who began to use it as a stately home. Later, as for the nearby Viverone and other Vercelli villages, the Roppola area was barbarously conquered by the leader Facino Cane, in the pay of the Marquisate of Monferrato. Roppolo, returned under the Savoy in 1427, then became the lordship of the Valperga counts. The history of the castle is therefore linked to a single episode: in 1459, after losing a dispute against his rival Ludovico Valperga di Masino, a certain knight Bernardo di Mazzè was placed in armor and walled up alive in the castle.
The veracity of the story would be confirmed by the discovery, during restoration works carried out in the twentieth century, of the remains of a man in armor behind a wall. The fact meant that the Valperga di Caluso-Masino family was condemned to return the castle and the Roppola area to the Savoy family. A long cause was born, which lasted until 1630, the year in which the Caluso-Masino branch died out and the Savoy family returned fully in possession of the castle and the village. In 1632 the castle became a garrison of Tomaso di Savoia against the French invasions. But when the latter allied themselves with the Savoy in 1640, Roppolo was sold to the Marquis Guido Villa di Cigliano and Giandomenico Doria di Ciriè. However, in 1730, some descendants of the Valperga, who had re-emerged from history, demanded - and obtained - the ownership of the village and castle again.
Centuries later, in 1837, the Valperga family, now decayed, sold the castle to Ignazio Anselmi, a wealthy landowner, who renovated the castle by transforming the medieval manor into an elegant country residence, an aspect under which it has survived today. The latter, in turn, during the Risorgimento, ceded the property to the senator and general Gustavo Mazè de la Roche; later the castle passed to the Chio family and, more recently, to the Gruner.
The subsequent owners, the Moransengos, transformed the building into a hotel in the 1980s. In this period the building also housed the Regional Enoteca della Serra, then moved elsewhere in 2015. After a period of closure to the public, in 2015 the castle was bought by the Saletta family who reopened it to citizenship in May 2018.
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