Montestrutto Castle

History

The Castle itself began life no later than the ninth century (probably about 892) as a defensive tower for a neighboring Benedictine monastery. From the eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth century it was under the control of the bishop-counts in Ivrea, a city that dates to at least Antiquity and is fifteen kilometers south along the Dora Baltea. In the fourteenth century, control of the castle passed to the House of Savoy, Amedeo VI of Savoy gave

jurisdiction of it to the ancient Lords of the larger and powerful Castle of Settimo Vittone(among these The Henrys family).Along with numerous other defensive positions in the Valle, the castle was destroyed between 1553 and 1565 by order of the Duke of Savoy, Charles III, as part of a larger campaign to remove any possible obstacles to the passage of French troops into Italy. In 1577, the owners of the castle, as well as of the castles of Settimo Vittone, Castelletto, and Catruzzione, called upon their local communities to reconstruct these fortifications. Whether Montestrutto castle was indeed subsequently rebuilt isn't entirely clear, nor is its exact role during the French assault on the village in 1704, when the town was heavily damaged and subjected to a flood. But apparently the castle was at least somewhat rebuilt by 1800, when Napoleon destroyed it in the course of removing all barriers to his invasion of Italy that year.

In the first years of the twentieth century, an illustrious Montestrutto family, the Pecco, bought the castle property from the Marchetti di Muraglio. As documented in archival photographs from 1901 to 1915, the family patriarch, General Cavaliere Fernando Pecco, who was not only the first podestà of Montestrutto but also a military engineer famous in Italy as the "father" of "modern" military fortifications, rebuilt the tower on its charred remains and added a short extension to it. …