Vintage postcard view of the Castle
The castle of the Costa is a historical residence that rises in the village of the Costa di Cumiana, in the province of Turin.
In the past centuries there were two castles on the Costa:
- the ancient castle or “castellasso” on top of the hill, now called “ruin”;
- the new castle downstream, still existing today, whose construction date is unknown.
The Antico castle stood on the plateau of the hill that divides into two parts the basin of Cumiana, within an area surrounded by walls, a strategic position for control on the opposite slopes, in which there are the fortified villages of the Costa and Motta, and on the open plain. It is believed that it was the residence of the Falconieri of the lords of Trana and Rivalta (X century) and later of the princes of Savoy-Acaia, who in 1366 ceded “castle, villa and place of Cumiana” to the counts Canalis. The castle was destroyed before 1587, the year in which it was known by documentary evidence that it was “ruined”.
The new castle is not as unitary as it might seem, but is made up of two contiguous palaces that existed certainly in 1587, when one belonged to William Bernardino and the other to Guid’ Alfonso Canalis, German cousins. When they were received by inheritance, they continued to be inherited separately. Only a part, the actual building in the east, was rebuilt in the 18th century by Count Ludovico Canalis on the foundations of a previous castle. A second palace was and still is connected to this palace, corresponding to the current west wing, which was owned by Carlo Canalis at the time of Ludovico and was never remodelled.
Recent studies have suggested that the castle sold by the princes of Savoy-Acaia to the Canalis counts in 1366 was not the old but the new one, and that in any case the Canalis must have inhabited it since the fourteenth century.
With the death in 1801 of the last descendant of Canalis, Giovanni Maria Ludovico, son of Giacinto and Giulia Alfieri, the castle arrived through various transfers of ownership to the Counts Provana di Collegno, who held it from 1864 until 1992.
