Located in a hilly area and inserted in the oldest part of the municipality, the castle of Illasi, together with that of Soave, has the task of safeguarding and controlling the valley floor paths.
Castello di Illasi History
The first news dates back to the year 1000 when the castle was owned by a deacon, a certain Moise. In 1243 it was occupied by Ezzelino III da Romano, the latter indicated by a bull of Pope Nicolò IV as rebuilder of the complex, which then was in a not happy state of conservation.
Dated June 27, 1289, a document attests to a donation to Alberto I della Scala and his descendants by the pontiff, grateful to the Scaligero for the capture by them, in Sirmione, a large group of heretics "patarini". The object of the donation was "the tower with the palace and the rubble that from the said castle are said to remain, with all the rights and its appurtenances as they are known to belong to the Roman Church".
Private property of the Della Tavola during the thirteenth century, in 1269 the castle was occupied by Pulcinella delle Carceri, in struggle with Mastino I della Scala, who used it as his refuge. The following year the statute called Albertino records the deed of transfer of the complex by Umberto della Tavola to Alberto I della Scala together with the castle of Soave and other fortresses. From the Scaligeri the complex received new vigor and various consolidation operations. In 1280 a Paduan incursion left him the signs of his passage.
More serious, however, were the damage caused by the return of the Venetian troops (1405) sent to tear the castle from the Carrara, Allied with William, last of the illegitimate children of Cangrande della Scala. The captain of the Carrara troops, realizing that the Illasians proved to be favorable to the return of the fortress to Dominanate, set fire to the manor that reported serious injuries.
The castle returned to be a theater of war in 1439. On March 28th of that year Nicolò Piccinino, the famous captain of fortune at the service of Filippo Maria Visconti, set the tents to Illasi, after inflicting a severe defeat on the Venetian troops and occupying the Soave castle.
When the Visconti star was extinguished and the banner of St. Mark returned, the castle gradually lost importance in the military field, also as a result of the peace policy pursued by Venice. In 1509 this decided to grant it as a feud to a valiant condottiere Girolamo Pompei, called "Malanchino", whose family boasted for centuries rights in that of Illasi. The investiture represented for the Pompeii not only an act of splendid and dutiful generosity but also constituted their reintegration into a possession enjoyed for centuries and which, through a series of historical-military events, had ended up in "foreign" hands. In reality, in the possession of their fiefdom, the Pompeii really entered only ten years later, when the war between the Emperor Maximilian of Austria and Venice ended.
From an architectural point of view the castle is divided into two buildings, according to the typical model of the Scaliger fortifications of the province of Verona: the keep, or the residence of the lord, flanked by the cassero, ie the dormitory of the militias. The boundary has an elliptical course, to circumscribe the underlying hill; everything was made with large rectangular blocks of hard tuff. The keep is 32 meters high, with a square plan with 10 meters of side, and is connected to the keep, about ten meters away, through a narrow passage. The formwork has a high access on a base, about 8 meters high, of rectangular base with a total height of 26 meters, divided on two floors. It is crowned with crenellations placed on a practicable terrace, the walls are distinguished by a single access door on the southern side.