Castello di Villalta

Its origins are lost in the mists of time, as testified by the Roman foundations, but the first written records date back to the twelfth century, when the nobles Villalta, branch of the lineage of the Lords of Caporiacco, an ancient Friulian Ghibelline family who still owns the castle they received the feudal investiture from Voldorico II. Theater of numerous and fierce fighting both for the strategic importance of its position and for the turbulence of its owners, it was destroyed and rebuilt several times in the 1300s: in 1310 it was destroyed by the counts of Gorizia while in 1353 it was almost completely soil by the patriarch Nicholas of Luxembourg, who accused the Villalta of having conspired and killed the predecessor patriarch Bertrando.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century the Counts of the Tower were feudal lords, which considerably enlarged the manor, especially with the construction of the Renaissance wing close to the ancient keep. However, the complex has not lost its original aspect of fortified work, with the imposing tower, the gabled swallow-tailed battlements, the loopholes and the drawbridge.
The second decade of 1700 sees as the protagonist of the castle the notorious Count Lucio della Torre, noble with convulsive and fictional life as few: so many criminal acts to attract first an unsuccessful announcement by the Venetian in 1717 and then another, this time of capital punishment, by common agreement between the Venetian and Austrian authorities for the murder of his wife Eleonora Madrisio; after the siege with two hundred soldiers and the capture, the trial followed the condemnation of public torture and decapitation. The burial in an anonymous tomb of a church in Gradisca did not stop the flowering of stories and grim legends concerning Count Lucio, well-lived in the Friulian imagination and not only until the middle of the last century.
In more recent times, however, its history has been marked by the occupation of the Napoleonic troops of Marshal Bernadotte and an Austro-Hungarian command after the defeat of Caporetto.

Today the castle can be visited by reservation and is suitable as a setting for special events and gatherings. The suggestion of history and nature accompany dinners, business lunches, private parties and weddings among finely decorated rooms, as well as meetings and business meetings can be used in congress rooms equipped with modern technologies.

Outside the walls a magnificent park offers colors and sensations that are always new to every season, with the flowers of iris and lavender to color blue the spring days, the scents of the acacias to fill the summer and the warm colors burning to become protagonists in the fall.