Marco Favaro
lvl.4
Flight distance : 2693425 ft
Italy
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The Gabiano castle is positioned dominantly over the Po valley, in the city of Gabiano, in the province of Alessandria. Cited by sources as early as the 8th century as cortem magnam nome Gabianam, it was donated in 1164 by Frederick Barbarossa to the Marquis William II of Monferrato and, disputed over the centuries by various families, was finally ceded in 1622, together with the title of Marquis of Gabiano, from Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga[1] to the Genoese noble Agostino Durazzo in settlement of the debts contracted by the court of Mantua with his family.
After a nineteenth-century restoration, which erased its original appearance as a turreted fortification, starting from 1907 the castle was the subject of careful restoration work commissioned by the owners, Giacomo Durazzo Pallavicini and Matilde Giustiniani, to the Parma architect Lamberto Cusani (Parma 1877 -1966) who carried out a philological reconstruction of the castle and the medieval village with its agricultural and wine-producing buildings, translating with great skill the teachings of Alfredo d'Andrade, creator of the well-known castle and medieval village in the Valentino park, built on the occasion of 'Italian general exhibition of 1884.
References to the Turin model can be found in the vestibule, in the chapel, in the medieval dining room and in the marquis' room, whose furnishings were created, based on the model of the bedroom of the Bonoris castle of Montichiari in the Brescia area, by the Arboletti brothers, well-known Turin carvers , already active in the medieval village. For the decorations of the castle Cusani called from Parma the sculptors Dossena and Rossi and the painters Tito Peretti and Latino Barilli.
The latter painted, between 1929 and 1930, the chapel, the gaming room, the weapons room and the ride room where the clients, Matilde and Giacomo Durazzo, are portrayed in medieval clothes. The restoration of the castle, begun in 1908 by the Marquis Giacomo Durazzo Pallavicini and completed in 1935 by the Marquise Matilde Durazzo Pallavicini of the Giustiniani princes, remains a very interesting example of medieval reinterpretation in an eclectic key, still preserved both in the style interior furnishings and in the surrounding park, of great landscape value. Today the work continues with his nephew Giacomo Cattaneo Adorno, who, together with Emanuela and his children Filippo and Serena, has carried out a careful renovation of the environment, combining current knowledge of oenology with respect for tradition.
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