Montiglio Castle, history of castles and dungeons
Historical background
There is no castle that is not accompanied by legends of tunnels which, passing under hills, rivers and plains connected points far apart. The castle of Montiglio is no different; the present structure is the result of successive extensions, reconstructions and remodeling for about a thousand years. This applies as much to the elevated parts of the structure as to underground parts, which, however, precisely because they are located at the base of the building, were probably modified to a lesser extent than the parts above.
The foundations of the castle appear to date back to the 9th century, and from the 10th century it constituted the advanced stronghold of the Marquisate of Monferrato.
Its strategically very important position determined the large number of sieges and warlike episodes involving it over the centuries.
In 1305 the castle, a refuge for the Ghibellines who had fled from Asti, was besieged by the Astigiani, who set fire to the town and inflicted severe damage to the castle.
In 1617, during the war between the Monferrato and Savoyards, the latter managed to penetrate the village, subjecting the castle to fire from three artillery pieces. The fortifications were completely destroyed and the castle severely damaged.
Major rebuilding works were implemented in the following century, from which the castle's current appearance is largely derived.
The original structure of the castle, which can be inferred from some eighteenth-century surveys, was based on a number of structurally independent towers, aggregated together to provide maximum defensive efficiency.
This aspect derived from an organizational arrangement not held by a single lord, but by several feudal lords occupying a single location to give rise to a legal and military entity of greater significance.
In 1224 the castle was in fact two-thirds owned by the Marquis of Monferrato and one-third by the Vassalli lords, while in 1228 the Marquis of Monferrato himself invested the nobleman Uberto Malpassuto with part of Montiglio.
Of the original U-shaped structure an entire wing has been demolished, and is now occupied by the park. Its location, however, can be guessed from an elevation of the ground, a kind of elongated hillock, partly clad in brick on the outer side and pierced by underground structures, most of which are still accessible, that probably constituted its underground rooms.
In the building that exists today, the medieval part consists of the ground floor of the area facing the original "outer court," today the road leading to the western gate of the castle.
Here, in what are referred to as the "medieval kitchens," the rooms consist of high brick vaults and several underground rooms, with numerous wells.
The chance and curiosity of the current owners of the castle to know what was hidden underground but afraid to delve into the various hypogeal rooms, allowed them to get in touch with the Saluzzo CAI. The various underground rooms are described below, attributing names derived partly from the toponymy already in use at the castle and partly from the imagination of the surveyors.
1 - The area of the "medieval kitchens"
This is the oldest area of the castle, at least as far as the second floor and underground rooms are concerned.
Next to the entrance gate is a well, the mouth of which is round in shape with stone vera having an outer diameter of 120 cm and an inner span of 55 cm The inner diameter of the well is 90 cm, with exposed brick lining for the first section and mortar plaster for the deepest part. The measured depth is 11.70 m, certainly less than the original depth, the bottom being completely dry and occupied by rubble, the thickness of which is not known.
1A - The "autoclave tank"
A wide archway located toward the northeast corner of the "medieval kitchens" room gives access to an underground room invaded by water and today used as a reservoir for irrigation purposes. The presence of an autoclave determined the name given to the cistern.
A masonry parapet, topped by a brick arch, gives onto a kind of corridor, about a meter wide and slightly splayed, with an uncovered vaulted ceiling.
At the time of the surveys the water was 3 m lower than the floor of the "medieval kitchens."
At the end of the corridor, which is 6.20 m long, a vast underground room opens up, measuring 4.10 m by 3.96 m
The ceiling is vaulted and there is no trace of supporting masonry. The walls are straight up to the height of 2.10 m, while the highest point of the vault is 2.70 m From above, along the back wall, come pipes, probably the drains of some gutters, which seem to constitute the only water supply of the cistern. At the time of the survey the water had a depth of 90 cm
1B - The "little room from the oblique corridor"
An oblique corridor departs from the back wall of the "medieval kitchens." It is lined with bricks, both on the sides and on the vault, and has a length of about 4.20 m, beyond which it emerges into a large, irregularly shaped room with a maximum height of 2.50 m and a sloping ceiling in the part towards the left (north). Walls and vault are bare clay, except for a short section to the right and left of the oblique corridor. On the right (South) side, the back wall has a section made of brick with an irregular structure: this is a communication door that originally faced the corridor of the cross pond, but was later bricked up, though without particular care in finishing the work. On the left side of the walled-in door is visible the trace, about 1 m deep, of a circular well, without facing masonry, which, however, is filled with rubble. In the ceiling at the mouth of the well is a vertical conduit, closed by a brick vault about 3 m from the floor: this was probably an opening that allowed well water to be drawn directly from the chambers above.
1C - The "pond of crosses"
This is one of the most striking underground structures in the castle. It has bare clay walls and vaults and access is via a corridor that initially bypasses a supporting structure (staircase leading to the upper floors ) and then, gradually descending for about 15 m, to a small rectangular room measuring 8.4 m by 7.9 m. Here, the niches in the walls suggest a burial crypt, partly due to the presence of three elongated niches found in the corridor and crosses carved into the walls in the initial section of the corridor (hence the name of the structure). Two subcircular cavities, about a meter deep, characterize the two corners of the hall to the right and left of the corridor's arrival, probably made to collect the water that infiltrates from the walls and is conveyed there by a gully (now rather ruined) dug at the base of the walls themselves.
It appears possible that initially the place was dry, but that later changes in the water table level or in rainwater flow paths created seepage problems, which were attempted to be remedied by digging the two drainage wells. Even today, however, the water conditions change as the seasons change: in fact, during various visits to the site, it was noted that the water in the pond was replaced by sludge, which then dried up almost completely. Regarding the niches, these are paired two by two on the sides of the hall while opposite the arrival of the corridor there is a larger, splayed one with the inside wider than the opening mouth. About halfway down the corridor, on the left as one enters, is the masonry wall that originally connected with the "oblique corridor room" located in a section where the corridor widens slightly, and raised about 40 cm above the floor of the corridor itself.
1D - The well "of the ladder"
From the room that now houses the canvases arranged for visitors to leave "a sign" of their passage, an opening in the floor gives access to a masonry staircase that descends one floor and, after a horizontal corridor, leads to a door that opens at the base of the retaining wall of the outer embankment in front of the castle wing itself. The staircase descends to the west, leaning against the wall to its right, and consists of 18 steps, and at the height of the twelfth step starting from the top, there is a side niche, just under two meters high. The niche, like most of the castle's underground structures, has no masonry lining, dug into compacted clays. The floor is 2.70 m above the floor of the upper floor. One meter wide, the niche has, set back 95 cm from the staircase, the mouth of a well with a diameter of 75-80 cm, slightly irregular in shape. The depth of the well was found to be 17.30 m from the edge of the parapet, with water at a depth of 11.60 m.
1E - The cistern of the "driveway"
In a corner of the driveway hallway (located between the "leave a sign" room and the "jails" area), there is a square floor area, about 2 m on a side, with a manhole. Underneath is what is left of a cistern, equipped with a supply channel and an overflow. The first is oriented east-northeast, the other outward (at a window). Both the cistern and the two channels (carved out at a depth of about 30 cm from the floor level) appear today to be for the most part filled with debris and therefore unable to properly perform their original dual function: collecting water to make a reserve and draining its excess to the outside.
2 - The "theater grotto" and the surrounding area.
This area of the castle is located below the courtyard floor on the park side. The hypogeal little room, which opens from one of the rooms on this side of the building, is characterized by the presence of niches along the shorter sides, two on each side, separated by a kind of column carved from clay. The small room has no masonry or cladding, except for the brick arch framing the entrance
3 - The "theater" area
The "theater" is a large hall located below the floor of the inner courtyard, characterized by beautiful vaulted ceilings, a central access door with a hall (now walled up), traces of polychrome frescoes on the walls and, an element that has caused the room to be attributed stage functions, a raised back wall, framed by an arch, with two rooms next to it: all of which suggests precisely a stage and an auditorium that, among other things, communicated directly with the rooms that were originally supposed to be the private rooms of the Marquises.
3A - The drainage pipes and the underground well.
In the central area of the "theater" opens a circular hole 75 cm in diameter, with a stone true, unfortunately broken. It gives access to a small underground network of water drainage intended to collect it and direct it to a well which, although placed outside the perimeter of the building, is currently without outlets to the outside. From the surveys carried out, the well would open in the area now occupied by a flowerbed, and thus its outlet would be masked by topsoil (the flowerbed has been removed and the whole has been graveled, forming a whole with the medieval square). The pit is therefore now accessible only through the circular hole in the floor of the "theater," which gives access to the 6.80 m long drainage channel with a height of 150-160 cm and a width of 80 cm, albeit irregular. The slope is such that drainage water is directed to the shaft through a narrow opening in the tuffaceous clay. Like the burrow, the well is dug into the tuffaceous clay without any type of lining. Its depth, measured from the floor of the burrow (which is about 4 meters below the level of the courtyard outside), is remarkable: 25 meters in total, with the water at m 14.40 from the floor of the burrow; the diameter is about 120 cm, and the walls are tuffaceous clay, without lining of any kind. At the time of the measurements taken, the volume of water collected in the shaft is therefore about 12,000 liters of water, certainly constituting an important reserve. It is interesting to note that no beam housings or other aids employed by the builders for the excavation of the well itself are visible on the walls of the well: it is therefore likely that the excavation was carried out by transporting the resulting materials (and the workers involved) with pulleys, ropes and baskets, or similar means. Three tunnels branch off from the circular opening in the center of the "theater," at which there is a small underground chamber of irregular shape: the longer one has already been described and leads to the well, while the two shorter ones, covered with large stones and closed by debris toward the bottom, point to the side walls of the "theater," with the obvious purpose of collecting water infiltration.
3B - The lateral hypogea to the "stage"
On the sides of the "stage" open two mouths of small tunnels, both closed by debris after a very short distance. On the right side, in the southeast direction, a small tunnel in the tuffaceous clay, unlined, 90 cm wide and 190 high, turns at a right angle after about two meters, affected, however, by an accumulation of debris that completely obstructs it. Quite similar is the situation on the opposite side of the "stage": a tunnel 70 cm wide at first but immediately almost completely obstructed by debris. At about 50 cm from the entrance the gallery seems to open into a larger room but still accessible with difficulty given its reduced height (about 50 cm ), with a slightly vaulted ceiling, dug into the tuffaceous clay and with a posthumous solid brick wall that is roughly aligned with the wall of the "theater" and of which only the upper part is visible. Behind the wall other debris can be glimpsed: it was probably meant to isolate a hypogeum section affected by collapses, but later collapses also disrupted the remaining part of the hypogeum itself, making it completely inaccessible. One is unable to speculate on the direction, development and function of this hypogeum.
3C - The well-cistern of the "theater"
From the small door that gives access to the "theater" passing by the stairs, going to the right one encounters a room, irregularly shaped, adjacent to the "theater" but located on a raised floor above it. In the part of the room closest to the door opens a manhole, carved out of a concrete slab cast on a pre-existing brick vault. From the manhole there is access to a vast well-cistern, dug directly into the clay with an irregular diameter of about 140 cm and depth of 5.50 m.
Actually, the bottom of the well-cistern communicates with the hall that is located on the lower floor and from which stairs leading to the upper floors and the "theater" start. The present bottom of the well-cistern is about 40 cm deeper than the floor of the room, and the division between the two is made up of a postern wall of bricks, stones and mud, probably of recent construction. It is possible that the well-cistern was originally much deeper and was accessible through an opening not only from above but also from the room on the lower floor. Later the well-cistern may have been largely filled in with various debris.
4 - The area under the multimedia hall
Below the room now used for multimedia projections is a large vaulted room (m 31.88 x 6.18) with an earthen floor, accessible through a doorway on the short side to the northeast and in communication with the rest of the castle via the "northwest passage." Entering through the gateway, on the right side are openings giving access to the "pillar room," The adjacent small room, the icehouse and the "cellar." At the bottom, however, are the "Northwest passage" gallery and the "media room well."
4A - The "pillar room" and the adjacent small room.
This is a room of generous dimensions (3.90 x 4.25m, about 2.80m high), accessible via a descending vestibule that runs more than 4m. This vestibule, which is very irregular in shape, bears witness to several successive interventions over time. The "pillar hall" is characterized by the presence of a massive masonry pillar (1.60 x 0.80m, high up to the ceiling), surely made to support the vault. To the left of the entrance to the hall departs a conduit, initially 1.80m high, then gradually lower, connecting the hall with the adjacent small room, which measures 1.50x2.50m and is at the floor level of the large room below the media room. Immediately behind the masonry bordering the small room, the conduit has a shaft, about 1 m in diameter, which extends upward for about 3 m, with the upper part covered with mortar, closed by a wooden lid. From under the floor of the small room, the arrival of a drainage channel of about 15 x 20 cm can be guessed. It is possible that the conduit had functions of collecting and draining sewage, and that some drainage to the outside was branching off from it.
4B - The icehouse
This is undoubtedly the most articulated and interesting hypogeum in the castle. It opens, with a walled access for about half its width, into the large room below the media room. A short corridor leads onto a rectangular room, which in the corner to the right has a shaft, about 4.70 m deep from the floor but dry (the bottom appears filled with debris; the original depth may have been greater). The shaft continues upward, again with bare clay walls, and has an opening to a small chamber at the top, closed by a metal grid through which light filters. It has been verified that this grid is located in the existing atrium behind a door leading to the outer courtyard. But the access corridor continues beyond the rectangular room by making a bend to the right. A few meters and here is the actual icehouse: a cylinder about 6 m high and exactly 4 m in diameter. The walls are of bare clay, the floor, concave in shape and covered with debris, is probably of brick. From the central area of the floor runs a drainage channel for meltwater, directed toward the well just mentioned. The latter, being fed by meltwater from the icehouse, may actually have served simply as a cistern, and not as a well in contact with the water table.
The convex vault is entirely lined with bricks and has an opening in the center. This is certainly the hatch through which the snow that was needed for its operation was discharged inside the icebox.
It should be located in the castle courtyard, not too far from the "shuttlecock cistern" and is today concealed by a thin covering of loam and gravel. Toward the sommatal part, at least 4 m from the floor, there is a small wooden door, framed with bricks. It is likely that such a door constituted the access to the icehouse provided for when it was filled with pressed snow. From surveys, it appears that such a doorway was connected with the now collapsed "broken gallery" on the right (see below).
4C - "The Wine Cellar"
Still used today for storing wine bottles, the "cantinetta" is carefully shaped for the purpose, with numerous niches and shelves along the walls. The state of preservation is excellent and is accessible through a metal gate. There is minimal difference in height between the large room under the media room and the "cantinetta," which has no masonry sections, only bare clay walls. Given the very easy accessibility of the "cantinetta," together with the absence of communication with other hypogea, it was not surveyed.
4D - The "Northwest Passage"
This is a short section (about 9.40 m) of tunnel excavated entirely in compacted clays, devoid of supporting lining except for the right side of the Northwest end that connects the vast room below the media room with the North-South oriented wing of the castle, where there is a masonry lining. The passage is perfectly serviceable, and shows no evidence of subsidence or injury. On the right side, arriving from the room below the media room, there is a hatch in the masonry that gives access to an open space: these are the vestiges of a well with a diameter of 175 cm, the circumference of which is interrupted by the presence of the wall that forms the wall of the "northwest passage." The depth is about 3.5 m with respect to the outside (the floor is at the level of that of the "passage to the Northwest"), while upward the well is closed by a brick vault with a central hole provided with a grating.
4E - The "interrupted tunnels"
These two tunnels, like the other hypogea in the castle, are dug into the clay without any form of reinforcement or support. A single entrance is followed almost immediately by a bifurcation: the right-hand gallery stops in front of a poorly made wall, The gallery thus appears to have partly collapsed, only to be filled with rubble and closed with a low wall. The orientation, location and elevation suggest that the gallery led to the icehouse, where in fact there is, a few meters above the floor, a small door also walled in, located just on the side towards the collapsed gallery.
The left gallery stops in front of a small plastered wall. On the floor, signs of the recent passage of water infiltrated from the wall are evident. Thanks to the surveys carried out, it was possible to discover that behind the wall is the "flywheel cistern": when the water in the cistern rises in level and reaches the wall closing the gallery, it begins to infiltrate through it. The cistern (described later in the specific section) now receives water from a downward slope of the eaves, and in fact it turns out that water infiltration occurs precisely at heavy rainfall, with a very short response time.
4F - The well of the "media room"
This well is located against the back wall of the long room on the ground floor below the "multimedia room," on the side opposite the entrance. It is characteristic for its square-shaped mouth, a shape that is also maintained in the inner part, with a section of 65x65 cm and brick lining that reaches a depth of 3.35 m. From that elevation the shaft takes on a more irregular shape, with obvious signs of erosion around 3.50 m, and walls of tuffaceous clay with no lining. The diameter becomes about 90 cm, Remarkable the depth of the well, turns out to be 25.20 meters, while the water level was, at the time of the measurement 9.50 meters. This results in a volume of water, in a period of rather marked drought, of almost 10 cubic meters.
5 - The outdoor area
5A - The "flywheel" cistern.
This cistern, already alluded to in the section on "interrupted galleries," is located along the outer wall of the castle, on the side facing the park, and is easily identified by the presence of a metal flywheel connected to an old water pump. The cistern, 9.10 m deep from courtyard level, has walls entirely lined with exposed brickwork. Access is through a 1.00x1.10 m sump closed by a stone slab with a central round opening. The part of the cistern closest to the access well has a brick vault, the remaining part is covered with stone slabs. The water level at the time of measurement was 2.10 meters.
5B - The well "of the little courtyard"
In the small courtyard that in plan appears to be adjacent to the "theater," partially cut into the thickness of the outer wall of the castle and enclosed by a metal grating, this well is lined with masonry for the first 3 meters or so, while the remaining part is without lining. The entrance consists of a small wall about 80 cm high from ground level. The total depth of the well is 38.70 from ground level: definitely remarkable. At the time of measurement, the water was about 17.70 m from ground level. The presence of a large metal pipe in the first few meters of the well made it impossible to descend, so we limited ourselves to sounding measurement. The presence of an indentation in the wall of the well at a depth of about 1.60-1.80 cm was noted, the nature of which is related to what is indicated in the description of the "backyard" well-cistern.
5C - The well-cistern "of the courtyard"
A structure made of squared stone blocks, with a circular hole in the center and an iron support for the pulley above, constitutes the entrance to a cistern whose structure is quite different from the others in the castle perimeter. A short circular conduit, unlined, opens onto a vaulted room, also unlined, that descends to the floor and having at the base a diameter of about 4.65 m. The bottom is 4.15 m above ground level.
At the time of the visit there was no trace of water, but the interesting thing was a room, about 120 cm high and about 1.5m long, at the end of which an uphill conduit was visible, connecting it to an underground conduit, about 40 cm wide and 70 high, with the ceiling consisting of stone slabs, which was, however, impossible to access because of the narrow dimensions of the uphill conduit. However, its continuation for several meters in the direction of the "grating shaft" was visible.
The presence, inside the latter, of an indentation in the wall just in the direction of the cistern-well, indicates that in fact the cistern-well did not draw water from the water table (it is not deep enough), but was fed by a sort of overflow from the "grating well." Some doubt about the real functionality of the system arises from the fact that at the time of the measurement, in the "courtyard well" the water was 17.70 m above ground level, while the overflow is 1.60-1.80 m above it: water reaches these heights only in case of heavy and prolonged rainfall, or in case the gutter drains are conveyed there (in fact there is the end of a large metal pipe in the well).
5D - The hypogea of the park
The original U-shaped plan of the castle of Montiglio is confirmed by the presence, in the present park, of a system of tunnels, as always devoid of supporting structures and masonry covering, whose conformation seems to relate them to a building above, now disappeared. In particular, in the vault of one section of the tunnel, a round duct is visible, with a diameter of about 130 cm, which is now closed by a wooden cover (probably installed in recent times to eliminate the danger from the presence of a hole in the ground of the park). This is an extremely similar structure to the various wells found inside the castle.
It is possible that originally the present hypogea in the park constituted one or more cisterns, perhaps connected to each other, accessible from the lower floors of the castle by means of wells. Following the demolition of this wing of the castle (which must have had its foundations raised above the present castle), lateral openings were made in the cistern, openings that constitute the present-day entrances to the hypogea.
5E - The burial grounds of the chapel
In the chapel there are, in the floor in front of the altar, two lithic slabs bearing various inscriptions. The older one, measuring about 40x50 cm, conceals a small hypogeous compartment about 160 cm deep, partially occupied by wooden fragments with some human bone remains. The compartment has no visible or intuitable underground continuation. The second, larger slab conceals a rectangular compartment, similar in depth to the previous one and bearing two overlapping loculi on each side. Only the lower right loculus is empty; the others are enclosed by a masonry of perforated brick and cement, certainly of recent manufacture. A cursory reconnaissance did not lead to the identification of other possible underground structures.
5F - The well at the base of the escarpment
At the base of the steep escarpment below the west side of the castle, shifted a few meters toward the janitor's house, is a well. It is located on the border between the present castle property and Mr. Roggero's property, about 20 meters below the castle. The well opens into a kind of rounded niche carved into the clay wall, next to a section of retaining wall. There is no masonry lining the walls of the well, nor is there any real around its mouth: the well is dug into the bare clay, with a brick wall about 45 cm high enclosing its front. Measurements taken in May 2000 give a width at the mouth of about1 meter, with the water surface 160 cm from the edge of the little wall and an overall depth of 11.60 m This results in a capacity of about 30,000 liters of water. However, it should be kept in mind that the well now functions as a cistern, receiving rainwater from a pipe that drains from the structures above. Groundwater would probably have no chance of reaching such a high level without the input of water from another source.
6 - Notes on the castle's water supply and reservoir structures
Below we list all these structures, dividing them into two classes: those that are currently dry and/or filled wholly or partially with debris, and those that currently still have water in them.
(a) structures currently without water:
- well in the "medieval kitchens"
- well in the "oblique corridor room"
- cistern "of the driveway"
- well-cistern of the icehouse
- well-cistern "of the theater"
- well giving onto the small room adjacent to the "pillar hall"
- well-cistern next to the gallery "northwest passage"
- well-cistern "of the courtyard"
- well in the hypogea of the park
(b) structures currently with water (approximate water volume at the time of the survey is given in parentheses):
- "autoclave" cistern (20,000 liters)
- well "of the staircase" (10,000 liters)
- underground well of the "theater" (12,000liters)
- well "of the media room" (10,000 liters)
- cistern "of the flywheel" (21,000 liters)
- well "of the courtyard" (42,000 liters)
Adding up the above approximate values gives a total volume of about 115,000 liters of water reserve. This value was measured in a drought period, and moreover it refers to the current situation in the castle, thus with many of the structures originally intended for water collection, channelization and storage reduced to a non-functioning condition (see the list of structures currently without water). This makes it possible to estimate as very high the amount of water on which, in past centuries, the castle and its occupants could rely in the event of a siege: one can perhaps consider a volume between twice and four times that of today, thus 230,000 to 460,000 liters. With an average consumption of 3 to 5 liters of water per person per day (for food uses only), this results in the possibility of supplying 100 people for about 15 months in the most reductive hypothesis, or 100 people for 4 abundant years in the most optimistic hypothesis. These are undoubtedly interesting values!
7 - Notes on the measurements made
The surveys were carried out in the period October-December 1998 (some measurements were verified on 27.02.1999, confirming the data previously found), after a dry summer and an autumn with almost no precipitation. This certainly affected the measured water levels, which were systematically much lower than those considered "normal" and lower than those detectable from the obvious traces in the various hypogea. During the measurement campaign, the various hypogea were visited in person, taking care to also descend inside the various wells with very few exceptions, such as the underground well of the theater, which presents considerable problems for the realization of a decently safe armor) providing for the various measurements by the use of metric washer combined with compass and ecclimeter. On the basis of the measurements, a graphic restitution was made, at a scale of 1:50. Sections of pipelines, underlying many floors, intended for drainage of infiltration and drainage water were excluded from the surveys. This is both because of the small size of the pipes themselves, which are generally made of masonry, and because only short sections of them are recognizable, most being clogged with debris and rubble. Pipeline routes of evidently modern construction were also not highlighted on the surveys.
