Palazzo Scarampi

Beneath the polite eighteenth-century face of Palazzo Scarampi lies the site of Monforte d'Alba's medieval castle — a fortress recorded in the eleventh century, fought over by marquises and communes, and finally reborn as a patrician residence.

Why it matters

Palazzo Scarampi is not simply an aristocratic town house: it stands on the site of Monforte's medieval castle. The layers here compress nearly a thousand years of Langhe history: an eleventh-century fortress, a new tower of 1225, a legal deed signed within the keep in 1277, Savoy bombardment in 1703, and the patrician palace raised by the Del Carretto family after 1706. Its position on the summit helps explain the village's pattern of lanes around the hilltop.

What to notice

Because the palace reused the castle's site, its bulk still commands the top of the hill, and its mass reads as civic rather than domestic. The 1833 renovation gave the building the appearance it keeps today. Around the summit are fragments of the older layout: the neighbouring octagonal oratory whose 1688 patron reserved an entrance linked to the castle, and the surrounding lanes that follow the line of the old fortifications. The name itself invites attention — the palace passed by inheritance to the Scarampi family, whose last resident marquis, Alberto Scarampi del Cairo, lived there until late in the twentieth century, a reminder that this remained a genuine noble residence, not a ruin.

Context and history

A castle at Monforte is documented in eleventh-century texts. In 1225 a "torre nuova" rose here, and in 1277 an act of law was concluded between the walls of the existing keep — evidence of the fortress's continuing administrative role. Ownership passed among local lords, then to the Commune of Alba and the Marchesi del Carretto, the family that shaped so much of the Langhe.

The castle's military life ended violently: in 1703 Savoy troops damaged it badly and conquered it during the wars of that era, and in 1726 it definitively passed to the Savoy state with the cession of the so-called imperial fiefs. By then the Del Carretto had already begun rebuilding — the present palace was constructed after 1706 on the site of the earlier fortress — and a renovation of 1833 fixed its final form. Through later inheritance it became the residence of the Scarampi marquises, from whom it takes its current name; of the medieval fortress itself no visible traces remain.