Castello di Vasio

It stands isolated on a height overhanging the gorge of the Novella, at 756 metres, between Vasio and Brez, in the upper Val di Non. Below it ran an ancient road, perhaps already Roman, which here crossed the torrent by a bridge towards Brez, Arsio and the castle of Sant'Anna, which can be seen directly opposite, beyond the gorge. The castle was built to watch over that road and to collect its toll.

It was built by the counts of Appiano between the 12th and 13th centuries, perhaps where a Lombard wooden tower had stood. It appears in documents in 1237 as castrum de Vaz; in 1273, after the death of the prince-bishop Egnone di Appiano, it passed to the bishopric of Trento, and a local family lived there which took its name, the lords of Vasio, ministeriales of the bishop. Between 1418 and 1420 it was occupied by the troops of Pietro di Spaur, who later had to give it back.

After the Vasio family died out shortly before the middle of the 15th century, it changed hands many times: the Hack, the Trapp, who restored it, then in 1518 Baldassarre Clesio, brother of the prince-bishop Bernardo. Twelve years later Baldassarre sold it to the Malosco, writing to his brother that the castle was in danger of collapsing and that saving it would cost too much. In 1561 it was bought by the Arsio, who kept it until the 19th century and restored it again in the 18th century, as two stone plaques record.

After the death in 1782 of Felice d'Arsio, the last episcopal captain of the valleys of Non and Sole, the castle fell into ruin. In 1878 it was bought by Battista Rizzi, who dismantled most of it and incorporated the remains into a farmhouse; a fire in 1885 brought down the west wing, and the tower was lowered to the height of the rest, under a single roof. Of the castle, which 17th-century maps show with a crenellated keep, parts of the tower remain, eight metres on each side with walls up to two and a half metres thick. At the beginning of the 2000s the complex was restored.