Grinzane Cavour Castle

The castle of Grinzane Cavour is a fortification located in Grinzane Cavour in the province of Cuneo.

The historical information on its origins is extremely scarce and there are many doubts about its construction date: there are those who place it in the thirteenth century and those who maintain that the construction of the tower dates back to 1350 and the rest to a later period. It is actually probable that the large tower constituted the primitive nucleus of the building and the subsequent bodies therefore completed it.

Around the fifteenth century the castle and the surrounding land belonged to the Marquis of Busca, whose noble coats of arms were in fact discovered under the plaster of some rooms.
The castle then passed by numerous owners of which little news remains until, in the nineteenth century, the castle hosted a figure of the Risorgimento for almost twenty years: Camillo Benso Conte di Cavour. The statesman arrived there in 1830, as a guest of his uncles, the De Tonnerre family.
In charge of administering these family assets, Camillo Benso demonstrated organizational capacity and openness to new scientific acquisitions. He gave a new imprint to local agriculture: he drew canals, adopted new rational cultivation systems, planted two hundred thousand new vines and attempted the cultivation of beets. He was appointed mayor of the small town in May 1832 at the age of twenty-two and he held this position until February 1849.

Since 2014 it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The castle is well preserved, it looks like an imposing rectangular building with a keep that occupies an entire wing, and a "U" shaped factory decorated with a series of turrets: two square and two, external and hanging, roundabout. Many windows open on the main facades to the east and west, only two on the north facade, while on the south side they are numerous and neatly aligned on three floors.
On 23 October 2010 a new building was inaugurated, designed by the architect Giorgio Teggi. The new wing is built inside the hill on which the ancient manor stands and includes offices and multifunctional environments: a 60-seat Teaching Room and a Congress Hall with over 250 seats and audio and video equipment.

Every year, at the beginning of November, the World Auction of the White Truffle of Alba takes place in the castle of Grinzane Cavour, which sees the participation of famous personalities from Italian politics, culture and the international jet set.
The auction is not for profit, as the proceeds from the sale of specimens of white truffles (Tuber Magnatum Pico) are entirely donated to hospitals, medical research institutes or other charitable organizations.

In this VASTphoto the castle has been photographed during a beautiful sunset on the first days of January 2021, with the surrounded vineyards snowed. These vineyards are famous for many wines, all five stars quality, renowned in all the world. Also in the winter season, the vineyards are extremely curated and clean, due to extraordinary quality of their grapes. Every row of the vine is numered and developed in a straight line with every single plants placed on a intricate wires structure to permit them to grow in the correct way and generate the precious wine in the autumn season