Immersed in a wonderful park of age-old trees and looking out over the Basso Monferrato hills, the Camino Castle (Castello di Camino) appears with its main structure crenellated on top and a large quadrangular tower that ends in a slight open gallery. Built around the year 1000 for defensive reasons and enlarged at the end of the 18th century, it is still one of the most beautiful castles in Italy both for its architecture as well as for its perfect state of preservation. After various events, the owner, Ferdinando Scarampi, restructured the oldest part of the castle, creating the dinning room in a Neo-Gothic style, the library, and the theater frescoed with scenes from Don Quixote. During the same period, a spacious courtyard and a chapel were also created within the castle’s interior. Camino was, for a long time, a place popular with the Savoy family, especially with kings Vittorio Emanuele II, Umberto I, and Vittorio Emanuele III. In more recent times, Benito Mussolini chose it for his speech to inaugurate the Monferrato water duct. Today, the frescoed rooms, the courtyards, and castle’s park host ceremonies and cultural encounters, while the cantinas preserve, in age-old casks, prized wines from the Monferrato vineyards.
