Italy · 14th century
Verrès Castle (Italian: Castello di Verrès, French: Château de Verrès) is a fortified 14th-century castle in Verrès, in the lower Aosta Valley, in north-western Italy. It has been called one of the most impressive buildings from the Middle Ages in the area. Built as a military fortress by Yblet de Challant in the fourteenth century, it was one of the first examples of a castle constructed as a single structure rather than as a series of buildings enclosed in a circuit wall.
The castle stands on a rocky promontory on the opposite side of the Dora Baltea from Issogne Castle. The castle dominates the town of Verrès and the access to the Val d'Ayas. From the outside it looks like an austere cube, thirty metres long on each side and practically free of decorative elements.
Text adapted from “Verrès Castle” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Verrès Castle ranks #2,145 of 9,079 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #156 of the 560 mapped in Italy. Founded c. 1350, it is older than 55% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 755 atlas entries founded in the 14th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 1,614 times in the last 60 days, more than 64% of the atlas. Wikidata records about 20,000 visitors in 2022. 9 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Turin, 66 km away. It is one of the 16 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of the Aosta Valley. It is stop 11 of 18 on the Aosta Valley castle route, Aosta to Ivrea. See how Italy compares in the castle statistics.
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