Torre medievale di Barbaresco

The brick tower above Barbaresco's cluster of houses is the village's oldest surviving structure. Built as a sighting post along the Tanaro in the late eleventh century, it frames views from the river bend toward the Alpine horizon.

Why it matters

Barbaresco's civic crest carries the motto "De Barbarisco turris et Arx" — tower and citadel — and the tower is the first of those two words. The municipality owns the building and treats it as the emblem of the village, standing on the bluff above the Tanaro where the medieval borgo formed as a fortified refuge. From the summit, the view extends across the river, Alba and Cherasco toward the Alps, with Asti visible on clear days.

What to notice

The tower is roughly thirty metres tall, square in plan and built in brick on a sandstone base. At the top, remains of merlons still trace the outline of the crown that once finished the building. The ground level contains a lower chamber, filled with earth to about half its height, beneath two barrel-vaulted rooms.

Context and history

The exact circumstances of construction are unknown, but the tower is dated to the end of the eleventh century. Its most plausible role is as one element in a chain of sighting towers running along the Tanaro between Asti and Alba, a system associated with the dominion of the Marquisate — later Duchy — of Monferrato. The tower formed part of a defensive ensemble with a castle that preceded the eighteenth-century palace visible today, and the village itself grew as a ricetto, a fortified refuge where farming families from the surrounding hills could shelter in times of threat. After centuries in private hands, the tower passed to the municipality in 1985 and has since undergone successive restoration campaigns, which consolidated the brick fabric and secured its position as the village's landmark.