Museo della Civiltà Cavalleresca

Inside Saluzzo's fortress, the Museum of Chivalric Civilisation reconstructs the society that the Marquisate of Saluzzo sustained between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. Eleven multimedia rooms on the third floor of La Castiglia follow the knightly class through war, court life and diplomacy — the cultural world that produced the court painter Hans Clemer.

Why it matters

Saluzzo was one of the last independent principalities of north-west Italy, a marquisate that survived four centuries between the claims of France and Savoy precisely by cultivating the chivalric-political networks this museum documents. Rather than displaying arms in static cases, the museum uses a fully multimedia layout to explain how a small Alpine court operated: its ties with the Papacy, the Empire, France and the Angevins, and its dealings with the Italian states. For a visitor trying to understand why this modest town preserves a cathedral, a Renaissance residence and a Flemish court painter's works, this is the museum that supplies the framework.

What to notice

The itinerary occupies eleven rooms on the third floor of the nineteenth-century wing of La Castiglia. The sequence moves through it moves through the self-representation of the knightly class, the mechanics of courtly society, and the marquisate's foreign alliances. Watch for the recurring tension the exhibition is built on — a tiny state performing on a European stage. Related works survive at Casa Cavassa, in the funerary chapel of Ludovico II at San Giovanni and in the cathedral's tomb sculpture. The museum's subject also contrasts with the prison cells in the basement of La Castiglia.

Context and history

The museum is the most visible fruit of the restoration campaign begun at La Castiglia in 2006, which converted the former fortress and prison into a museum complex. Its subject is the Marquisate of Saluzzo in its formative period, from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, when the marchional dynasty consolidated power over the valley between Monviso and the Po plain. The choice of location is precise: the third floor of the nineteenth-century wing, added long after the medieval fortress, allows the medieval narrative to be told without imposing modern fittings on the historic fabric below — and the museum functions as one part of a single interpretation of the building: residence, seat of power, prison, museum.