Along the road from Chieri to Poirino, going towards Monferrato and Roero, is the town of Pralorma, dominated by the massive outline of a castle. The origins of the hamlet and the castle are not definite, even if the first references lead back to the Gorzano family, the ruling family of Pralormo in the 13th century. Between 1680 and 1797, it turns out that Pralormo was divided between the Roero family, the descendents of Giacomo Beraudo (who was President of the Senate) and the Ferrero family of Marmora. When the feudal privileges were lost, the castle’s property was unified by Count Carlo Beraudo, Ambassador to Vienna, Secretary of the Interior, and Finance Secretary to Carlo Alberto, who, in 1840, bought the entire property and decided to radically restore it. The castle’s transformation was entrusted to the royal architect Ernesto Melano, who covered the central courtyard, transforming it into a large hall and connected the upper rooms with a gallery. Outside, he exchanged the drawbridge for an entry portico with a terrace and filled in the moat. Today, the Pralormo Castle (Castello di Pralormo) has kept only the back section with the two cylindrical towers from the original structure. In order to redesign the castle’s perimeter to create a park there, Beraudo turned to the architect Xavier Kurten, who designed the park at Racconigi Castle. Kurten took advantage of the natural frame formed by the mountains and created a “journey of delight” with vistas, colors, and picturesque corners of rotating flower beds, which guarantee flowers during every season of the year. Near the end of the 19th century, the Orangerie (orange grove), the glass and iron greenhouse, and the grandiose farmstead were built.
