Castiglione Falletto

The commune sits on a Langhe ridge between the towns of Barolo and Serralunga d'Alba, its 672 inhabitants and its whole territory inside the DOCG zone and the UNESCO Vineyard Landscape. The written record starts on July 31, 1001, when Emperor Otto III granted the castle to the Marquis Olderigo Manfredi, Count of Torino. In the twelfth century it passed by the will of Bonifacio del Vasto to the Saluzzo.

The Falletti family arrived in 1300 and gave the castle its present form, adding outer walls and corner turrets around the older core. The village itself is small, built along the ridge around the castle, stone houses with vineyards dropping away on either side. Below the castle, the parish church looks east across the valley to the castle at Serralunga d'Alba on the next hilltop, a reminder that this ridge is one of several such promontories facing each other across the surrounding wine country.

The castle is closed inside, privately held, but its garden opens on event days for a full view over the vines. Successive owners, from an imperial grant through the Saluzzo to the Falletti, have left their mark mostly in the walls and turrets added around the tower, while the tower itself, older and stranger in shape than its neighbors, has outlasted all of them.