Tour de Ville Castle
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About
The Tour de Villa Castle (French: Tour de Ville), also long called the Tower of the Poor (French: Tour des Pauvres), is a private castle in the municipality of Gressan, Aosta Valley.
It stands on a modest granite rock on the gentle slope that also hosts the village, west of the Côte de Gargantua, the lateral moraine of the Pila basin glacier at the end of the Gressan stream impluvium.
It is a little-known medieval-era castle, partly because compared with other Aosta Valley castles, such as the regionally managed Fénis Castle or Issogne Castle, this one is less imposing though in excellent condition, and was until 2011 inhabited by its owners and not open to visitors. Already visible from the regional road of Gressan (SR 20), nestled among the apple orchards and vineyards that characterize the fertile municipal territory, it can be reached by taking the road to the hamlet of the same name; from it, the De la Plantaz Tower towards the valley and the Sainte-Marie-Magdeleine church, with its façade frescoed in 1453, towards the east are easily reached with a short walk.
Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。Photography via Wikimedia Commons.