Renovated Sarriod de la Tour Castle reopens to tell the story of 15th century Aosta Valley

Asof August 5, 2023, the Château de Sarriod de la Tour in Valle d’Aosta will reopen to the public, once again recounting the golden century of Aosta Valley art. After a year’s wait, the mansion nestled among the orchards of Saint-Pierre is in fact returned to the public in a renewed guise, regenerated by an enhancement intervention on the construction, plant engineering and layout levels.

To tell the story of the castle, a stone palace with a wooden soul, two days of free accompanied tours have been organized, on August 5 and 6: every half hour, visitors will be taken outside and inside on a tour that explores the 15th century in Valle d’Aosta, a period of great artistic splendor suspended between the late Gothic and Renaissance periods.

Visiting the castle will offer an appreciation of the work done, co-financed with regional and European resources through cross-border cooperation programs. On the outside, the surfaces of the surrounding walls have been restored, and inside the structure a new ring tour route has been set up, at the same time as the reorganization of spaces for conferences and exhibitions and the implementation of technological systems.

Symbolic of this rebirth is a recent regional acquisition, which has found a home right inside the castle: it is the Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Jean de Chetro, a sculptor of Aosta Valley origin. A 15th-century wooden panel that, after a complex intervention at the Venaria Reale Restoration Center, has revealed its original colors, hidden for centuries. The bas-relief is one of the rare examples of the work of an artist, one of the makers of the Aosta Cathedral choir, who probably trained in the workshop at the Sarriod residence itself. The inclusion of the bas-relief in this context is a choice consistent with the characteristics of the castle, one of the purest expressions of the Aosta Valley Middle Ages.

The Lamentation over the Dead Christ dialogues with the other artistic treasures housed in the manor, and especially with the Hall of Heads: monsters, human beings, hybrid beings, dragons, and mermaids populate the carved wooden ceiling, made around the 1530s.

With the reopening of the castle, visitors will also be able to return to admire the Visions of the Middle Ages exhibition, a journey between the sacred and the profane that aims to shed light on the most curious aspects of medieval art, with a focus on the noble Sarriod de la Tour family, who owned the castle for a full nine centuries.

Renovated Sarriod de la Tour Castle reopens to tell the story of 15th century Aosta Valley

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