Themed thread
The Thun family
Six hundred years in the same valley, and a family that mattered in Europe.
Castel Bragher passed to the Thun family in the fourteenth century and still belongs to them: more than six hundred years with the same owners, a rare case. In 1844 it was the Counts Thun of Castel Caldes who donated the land for the village’s new parish church. These are two small traces of a family that mattered throughout central Europe, and that in Val di Non you come across simply by driving around.
17 places where you meet it
- Castel ThunVal di NonIt stands at the top of the hill above Vigo di Ton, in a panoramic position over the whole of the Val di Non, and is among the best preserved medieval complexes in Trentino.
- Castel BragherVal di NonIt stands at 640 metres on a crag in a side valley between Taio and Coredo, enclosed by woods and, to the west, by the gorge of the rio Sette Fontane, thirty-four metres deep, which acts as a natural moat.
- Castel CaldesVal di SoleIt stands on a small rise at the entrance to Caldes, where you enter the Val di Sole.
- Castel ClesVal di NonIt stands at 616 metres on the top of a promontory one kilometre north of Cles, among the apple trees that run down to the lake.
- Castel MonrealePiana RotalianaIt stands on the heights of Faedo, above the vineyards, and appears in documents in 1238 as castrum regalis, then castrum Cunispergi: in German Königsberg, the name now borne by the Comunità Rotaliana-Königsberg.
- Castel PlaceriVal di NonNothing remains of the medieval castle of Rumo, and we include it all the same: even a lost castle tells how this side valley was defended and inhabited.
- Castel RocchettaVal di NonAlmost nothing remains of this castle, and the reason lies a few metres away: the tower was pulled down in 1860 to make way for the construction of the Rocchetta road cutting, the Austro-Hungarian fort with eleven cannons that still guards the same narrow pass.
- Castel ValerVal di NonIt stands at 594 metres on a hill above Tassullo, in the municipality of Ville d'Anaunia, with a moat to the north and, to the south, the drop into the gorge of the rio Paglia, which over the centuries has several times eroded the slope.
- Castello di CastelfondoVal di NonIt stands on a wooded hill at the entrance to Castelfondo, above the point where the rio Robiola flows into the torrente Novella.
- Castello di San MicheleVal di SoleIt stands above Ossana, on a spur of rock that is otherwise inaccessible, with the entrance on the east side, and it watched over the road of the Passo del Tonale: the route by which merchants and caravans climbed towards the Trentino and the Tyrol from the valleys of Brescia and Bergamo and from Lake Garda.
- Chiesa dei Santi Maurizio e CompagniVal di NonParish church of Tregiovo, a hamlet of Novella. A first place of worship dedicated to Saint Maurizio existed by the 14th century, but the first mention appears in the visitation records of 1695. It obtained its baptismal font in 1742, the eucharistic reservation from 1767 and curacy status in 1887.
- Chiesa dell'Assunzione di MariaVal di NonAlso known as the sanctuary of Santa Maria Assunta or the sanctuary of the Madonna di Bresimo, it appears explicitly in documents from 1324.
- Chiesa della Madonna di LoretoVal di NonThe church of the Madonna di Loreto was built in 1723 and blessed three years later, in 1726.
- Chiesa della Madonna di LoretoVal di SoleThe small church of Presson was built in 1626 and is first mentioned in documents in 1629.
- Chiesa di San BartolomeoVal di SoleA first place of worship dedicated to Saint Bartholomew is mentioned at Caldes from 1374: it stood in the village square and was demolished in 1848, but its bell tower is still there.
- Chiesa di San MartinoVal di NonIt stands near Castel Thun and shares its date of birth with the castle: it was presumably built in 1422, the year in which Castel Thun was rebuilt.
- Chiesa di San VigilioVal di NonLocal tradition holds that it was founded by Saint Vigilio towards the end of the 4th century, and this is not a groundless belief: the Roman road passed right beside it, near Castel San Pietro, and after the martyrdom of the saints Sisinnio, Martirio and Alessandro in 397 the bishop of Trento must have travelled along it.
The links between these places come from our entries, where every fact has been checked against the sources. The entries are written one at a time: this thread will grow with them.