Castel Caldes

It stands on a small rise at the entrance to Caldes, where you enter the Val di Sole. Rambaldo and Arnoldo da Cagnò built it between 1230 and 1235, with the permission of the prince bishop Gerardo, in the form of a tower house: together with the fortress of Samoclevo, higher up, it served to control the traffic of the valley.

In 1464 it passed by donation to the Thun, who transformed it. Around the original tower, five storeys under a gabled roof, the residential buildings and the small tower with the spiral staircase grew up, and in the 16th century the rooms were covered with decorative cycles. The chapel, dedicated to the Beata Vergine and frescoed between 1670 and 1675 by the Veronese painter Giovanni Cinquetti, stands outside the buildings but inside the walls.

In the tower there is a room entirely covered in frescoes that they call the prison of Olinda. The legend tells that the young countess Marianna Elisabetta Thun was shut in there by her father Redemondo so that she would not marry Arunte, the court minstrel with whom she had fallen in love; she died in there, of love, and the frescoes are said to be her work.

In the 19th century the castle was sold to a local family, and in the 20th century it passed to the Provincia autonoma di Trento, which between 2010 and 2014 restored it thoroughly and opened it to exhibitions and cultural events.