Castello di Castelfondo

It stands on a wooded hill at the entrance to Castelfondo, above the point where the rio Robiola flows into the torrente Novella. It was the seat of a judicial district covering much of the upper Val di Non: Melango, which today is Castelfondo, Raina, Dovena, Brez, Arsio, Traversara, the valle di Senale, Ruffrè, Don, Amblar, the valle di San Romedio and Tavon.

In the second half of the thirteenth century the owner, Godescalco di Cagnò, sold it to Mainardo II di Tirolo-Gorizia, who made it the bridgehead for taking control of the Val di Non: a castle that changed the history of the valley, not only its own. At the beginning of the fourteenth century it belonged to Enrico III di Rottenburg, in 1412 it returned to the counts of Tyrol, who installed captains there, in the middle of the fifteenth century it belonged to Bernardo Fuchs von Fuchsberg, and in 1471 it passed to the Thun, for good. In 1492 Simone Thun had the four-arched portico built in the courtyard by the master mason Lorenzo di Val d'Intelvi.

In 1525 it was besieged by the peasants of the Peasants' War. Two fires, in 1670 and in 1738, also destroyed part of the family archive; then the branch of the Thun who lived there moved to Bohemia and the castle fell into ruin. In the nineteenth century it came to the Castel Bragher branch, and Guidobaldo Thun, born in 1808, and his son Galeazzo, who died in 1931, restored it to how it had been. Around the keep, the oldest part, it preserves a collection of weapons, the library, the archive and the painted rooms: the Camera del foro, the Stanza del camino, the Camera longa, the Camera di don Chisciotte, the Camera dei vescovi with the portraits of the Thun prelates, the Salone degli antenati. It is privately owned and cannot be visited.

Next to it is the church of the Natività di Maria, mentioned in 1282 and restored in 1528, where in 1945 frescoes from different periods came to light, some signed by Kaspar Blabmirer, active in 1433. Near the church rises the torre di Santa Maria, round, crenellated, about twenty-five metres high with a conical roof: it was built between 1468 and 1470 by the inhabitants, on the orders of Sigismondo d'Asburgo, as forced labour to punish an attempted revolt.