Castello di Ivrea

A brick fortress with cylindrical corner towers rises at the top of Ivrea's old town; three towers retain their height, while the fourth is truncated. Built for the House of Savoy in the mid-fourteenth century and later used as a prison for over two hundred years, the castle embodies successive phases of military, residential and penal history.

Why it matters

Ivrea Castle is a major surviving work of medieval Savoy military architecture in Piedmont, and its silhouette anchors the whole historic centre. The poet Giosuè Carducci's epithet for Ivrea — the city "of the red towers" — refers to this brick mass, and the epithet has stuck to the castle itself. Its story is unusually layered: conceived as a statement of Savoy power in the Canavese, converted in the eighteenth century into a prison that operated until 1970, and finally returned to the city as a heritage attraction. Its defensive walkways and courtyard preserve the medieval structure, while altered interiors record the prison era.

What to notice

The quadrangular plan surrounds a large central courtyard, with cylindrical towers at the corners; merlons are shaped like swallowtails in the Savoy manner. One corner tower stands out immediately because it is truncated: the master tower was blown apart in 1676 when lightning ignited the gunpowder stored inside, killing many people and wrecking nearby houses, and it was never rebuilt to its full height, now closed by a conical slate roof. Inside, the prison decades left their mark — floors were subdivided and ceilings lowered to create more cells, and the furnishings of the residential quarters were stripped away. On the ramparts, look out over the rooftops towards the cathedral close and across the Dora Baltea valley, the strategic view the castle was built to command.

Context and history

Construction began in 1358 on the orders of Amedeo VI of Savoy, the Conte Verde, with work continuing into the 1390s. The castle originally stood beside the medieval seats of civic and religious power — the commune, the bishop's chapter and the cathedral — forming one fortified ensemble on the hilltop. From around 1750 it served as a prison until 1970, an occupation that gutted the interiors but also preserved the shell. After decades of semi-abandonment, ownership passed from the State to the Comune di Ivrea in late 2017 through the "federalismo culturale" transfer, enabling a restoration campaign. The restoration culminated in the castle's reopening in July 2024.