Little-known castles of Italy: fortresses and manors far from mass tourism
A guide to Italy's little-known castles: 11 fortresses, forts and manors to visit without queues, from the Alps to Sicily.
Italy counts thousands of fortifications, but the tourist flow concentrates on a handful of names: Castel del Monte, the Sforza Castle, our homegrown Loire manors. Seeking out the little-known castles of Italy instead means arriving in courtyards where there is no queue at the ticket window, where the guide tells you the story at leisure and where the fortress is enjoyed together with the landscape it was meant to command. Here we gather eleven, chosen by region and by type of fortification: hilltop fortresses, walled towns, blocking forts, eccentric manors. Almost all can be visited in half a day and paired with a village.
Hilltop fortresses
We start in the Apennines with Rocca Calascio, in Abruzzo. At 1,460 metres it is one of the highest fortresses in Italy: four cylindrical towers around a keep, no roofs, only limestone and the wind of the Gran Sasso. It has served as a set for "Ladyhawke" and "The Name of the Rose", yet it is still reached on foot along a path, and the only ticket is the effort of the climb. Beside it, the octagonal chapel of Santa Maria della Pietà completes the picture.
Staying with the idea of a carved-out fortress, inland Sicily offers Sperlinga, in the province of Enna: a castle hewn from a single bank of sandstone, with inhabited caves beneath the halls. On the entrance arch is still carved the phrase "Quod Siculis placuit, sola Sperlinga negavit" — during the Vespers of 1282 it was the only town not to join the revolt, giving refuge to an Angevin garrison for nearly a year. Still in Sicily, but from an entirely different era, the Euryalus Castle above Syracuse is the most imposing Greek fortification to have come down to us: moats dug into the rock and underground galleries commissioned by Dionysius I, which are almost always walked in solitude.
Eccentric castles
For those who love architectural oddities, in Tuscany there is Sammezzano: a Moorish-Orientalist castle in the Valdarno, made of stalactite rooms, polychrome arches and the famous Hall of the Peacocks. It is closed and visitable only during exceptional openings, but even just the sequoia avenue and the red-earth Balze around it are worth the detour. Changing register entirely, in Piedmont the Ricetto of Candelo is not a lordly castle but a fortress-village: an enclosure of pebble "cells" where the farming community stored wine and harvests in case of war. To walk among its paved lanes is to step into a manual of medieval defensive architecture.
The Alps
Going north, South Tyrol preserves two gems. Glorenza, in the Val Venosta, is a tiny walled town: a complete ring of walls, towers and porticoes along which you make the circuit in a few minutes, with the peaks of the Ortles in the background. Above Merano is instead Castel Tirolo, the manor that gave its name to an entire region: sculpted Romanesque portals and a frescoed chapel, reachable only by a walk among the apple orchards.
The Aosta Valley is a veritable encyclopedia of castles. To stay with the less-trodden, Fénis is the fairy-tale manor par excellence, with its double crenellated wall and inner courtyard decorated with Gothic frescoes of saints and proverbs. Not far off, the Fort of Bard is a 19th-century blocking fortress, rebuilt by the House of Savoy, today a museum hub: you reach it by panoramic lifts, and at its feet stretches a stone village often ignored by the motorway traffic.
The less touristy South holds Bisaccia, in upper Irpinia: a ducal castle with a Norman tower, rebuilt after the earthquakes, dominating a silent village facing towards Apulia. It is the kind of stop that pairs well with a slow itinerary between Campania and the Daunia.
We close in the city, because not all fortresses sit on a hilltop. In Ferrara, behind the bulk of the Este Castle with its moat still full of water, open red-brick courtyards that few stop to explore: Renaissance perspectives a step from the crowds of the centre.
Practical tips
If you want to widen the range further, it is worth mentioning destinations outside this selection too: the Castle of Fénis has equally striking "cousins" like Verrès and Issogne, while in Friuli the Castle of Gorizia and in Molise the Pandone Castle of Venafro remain surprisingly quiet. But to begin with, the eleven above are enough to compose four or five weekends between the Alps, the Apennines and the islands, always far from the queues. The practical tip: check the opening times (many open by season or only at weekends) and set off early, so you will have the walls almost all to yourself.
Practical guides for Udine
Practical info
When is the best time to visit Little-known castles of Italy?
The recommended time is June, July and September, when it is less crowded.
Where is Little-known castles of Italy?
Little-known castles of Italy is located in Italy.
How to get there
- ✈️ Nearest airport: CdV Palazzone di Narni ~6 km as the crow flies
Nearest points as the crow flies (source OpenStreetMap): actual times depend on the roads, often mountain ones.
