History of the Castle
History of the castle
From the hill on which it rises, CastelBrando dominates the whole Valmareno valley. Erected from Roman times as a control structure to defend the important lines of communication which connected Northern Italy to the countries on the other side of the Alps, the Castle has undergone various enlargements over the centuries: it was the residence of the Da Camino family, who surrounded it entirely with imposing Guelph-style decorative battlements and built a central tower. The Castle then passed under the command of the Venetian Republic, which awarded its fiefdom first to Marin Faliero and then to the mercenary captains Giovanni Brandolino and Erasmo da Narni, better known as the Gattamelata; after the fall of Venice, it became the property of Brandolini Counts until 1959, the year in which it was sold to the Salesian fathers, who altered its structure and used it as a centre for spiritual studies. In the first half of the 16th Century Antonio Maria Brandolini, engaged engineers of considerable skill and enlarged the central part of the Castle in Sansovino style, adding elegant lines of Venetian two- and three-mullioned windows.