THE CASTLE

THE CASTLE

Along Via Sant’Agostino you can admire a door frame showing the Lamb and a rose branch. A little further you will find the only portal of the Capponi family showing two cockerels and a crown, besides an ornamental drawing depicting a little flower and a cross. The initials M and C indicate that the house was the residence of Marco Capponi, a notary who lived in the XV century. 

When you reach a small square, you will find the remains of what once used to be an impregnable fort. Actually the remains of the castle are quite scant, although the walls, the tower and the cistern still maintain their charm. The Republic of Genoa had the castle built entirely on the rock to defend its borders; the castle was damaged several times by the people of Triora as a form of protest against the exorbitant taxes they had to pay. As the Genoese could not do without it, they had to restore it every time. 

From the castle, another fortress can be spotted. It is simply called ‘fortino’ (little fort) and used to protect the village from above and be a customs point with Piedmont until 1850. In 1878, after the ancient church of San Pietro and Marziano was destroyed, the graveyard was moved inside the ‘fortino’.  The villagers carried heavy carts full of soil and human bones up to it; also the black stone architrave that used to be at the entrance of the destroyed church was carried up there and placed in the graveyard, above the central wall near the stairs; the trigraph of Christ with two keys bears the following date: 

 “MCCCCLXXVIIII, Die Prima Junii” (1 June 1479).