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 Dwight Peck's personal website
Long
weekends in Italy: Gran Paradiso
Castles
in Italy: Fénis,
Val d'Aosta
You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.
The
Castle of Fénis shimmers in the heat just 15 minutes by auto downstream
from the old Roman city now called Aosta in northwestern Italy. Here we are in
July 2003.
Begun
in 1242 and built up properly in the 1340s by the Challant family, to help control
the iron trade in the region, Fénis is just one of many astonishing castles
that dominate the historically French Savoyard and Italian valley of Aosta, between
France and Switzerland near Mont Blanc and the Grand St Bernard, on the one hand,
and Italy between Turin and Milan on the other. (Fort Bard farther down the valley was another Challant stronghold.)
Storybook
towers -- a castle never captured by direct assault! In fact, never assaulted.
Many
of those daunting towers must have been filled with short muscular guardsmen running
up and down the steps with armor on, dashing along the parapets in times of trouble
-- the small circular tower on the left, however, just in front of the square
one behind it, was for doves.
Here's
a sight likely to give any medieval invading brigade commander a long pause, a
big gulp, and a review of his or her pension options.
That's
the dovecote tower there, the round one with the whitish belt round the middle.
The doves were allowed to govern themselves, with their own Parliament and everything,
as long as they gave up one or two of their number every week for the châtelaine's
dinner.
That's
the front gate, but wasn't. It was added in the 1920s but seems to work remarkably
well, as a gate. In summer, at least, you get a guided tour of the whole array
every half hour (in Italian, of course), for a minimal fee, but you're not to
take photographs of the interiors. So none here, alas. Great paintings of demented
saints on all the walls, great bedrooms!
Kristin
peeking out of the great hall
 Feedback
and suggestions are welcome if positive, resented if negative,  .
All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 8 September 2003, revised 31 July
2007, 10 December 2013.
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