The castle’s history is closely linked to that of the city of Fossano. In 1324, Filippo Savoy, Prince of Acaja, ordered that a castle be built in brick with a square layout and with four corner towers. An interesting fact: the towers, which are also square, are placed on diagonal axes and two of them have little towers which have semi-cylindrical staircases along the inside edges. Around the end of the 15th century, Carlo I of Savoy made a series of important modifications that transformed the castle into a noble residency with halls, loggias, and porticos. Under the reign of Carlo Emnauele I of Savoy, between 1580 and 1630, the castle went through a series of events. In 1536, after signing the “Treaty of Fossano” with France, it was turned into a prison and then turned into a military barrack. Well restored between 1956 and 1963 by Turins’s Sovrintendenza ai Monumenti (Turin Monument Management), it has housed the Biblioteca Civica e L’Archivo Storico Comunale (City Library and Community Historical Archives) since 1985; it has also been the setting of various city events such as “La Giostra dell’Oca” (an event in period costumes in which knights, while riding on horseback, attempt to cut off the head of a goose), which is held during the next-to-last weekend of June.
