160 m², Sleeps 6/7 people
3 bedrooms
, 3 bathrooms
Torre del Vescovo is a two-story wing of the main castle building, including the original watchtower, and provides a complete medieval castle experience. The remainder of the manor house is occupied by the owners.
The living room has a high beamed ceiling and is adorned with frescoes; it has a dining area, a very large fireplace, an old piano and a television.
There is a separate full kitchen with espresso machine, dishwasher and clothes washer.
Upstairs are found a master bedroom with antique furniture and frescoed walls, with a queen size bed and a large en-suite bathroom with wall shower over the bathtub. There are two more double bedrooms (one with two single beds, one with queen size bed that can be separated into twins) and a bathroom with shower over tub. There is a third bathroom downstairs with a stall shower.
From a landing on the stairs there is access to a balcony that overlooks the valley and leads to a small study within the tower itself, with a single bed. A door in one of the upstairs bedrooms gives exclusive access to ladders to the top of the tower.
From the living room a short flight of stone steps leads to an enclosed private garden, with a stone table and a wisteria-covered gazebo.
Torre del Vescovo is accessed via the upper courtyard, a gravel terrace under a majestic linden tree, which is shared with the tower suite San Martino (1-2 people) — the two can be rented together to provide complete privacy and sleep 8/9 people in all.
+ € 205 one-time fee
+ € 205 one-time fee
+ € 425 one-time fee
High Season
: June and September
Mid Season
: May, July, August, October
and Christmas/New Year holidays
Low Season
: March and April (for November and December please inquire)
An inscription painted on the left side of the fireplace in the living room testifies that the garlands, birds and Latin phrases that decorate the walls were inspired from the dining hall of the private apartment that Agostino Patrizi Piccolomini, bishop of Montalcino and abbot of Sant’Antimo, had built for himself in that abbey in the 15th century. This explains the name of the room and the apartment at Montalto.
The Latin quotations are fragments from the Odes of the roman poet Orazio (Horace) and may have been mixed up in the process of copying.
A fire ignited by lightning in the last century blackened the walls, and after all else failed, the frieze was finally saved with the old system of rubbing down the walls with bread.
The painting of a dwarf hanging near the passage to the kitchen was done by the Spanish painter Josè Moya del Pino, Diana's father. It is a copy of a famous work of Diego Velázquez, the portrait of Sebastián de Morra, “court dwarf” of Philip IV of Spain. Does he look familiar to you?... The original must have been of inspiration for the character Tyrion Lannister of the TV series “Game of Thrones”.
A balcony, built onto the tower in Napoleonic period, has neo-Egyptian columns. It leads to a little study in the tower itself. Palmiero Palmieri wrote above the door “Chi qui entra mi fa onore, chi non entra mi fa piacere”: Who enters here honors me, who does not enter pleases me.
In a corner of the little room a small shelf held a skull: the remains of the nameless lady-love of an early Palmieri, who was poisoned by the jealous wife. Known as the Dama Blu, or Blue Lady, she was said to haunt the castle until her skull was sent to the cemetery.
Don’t worry! The enormous snake skin on the wall of the upstairs corridor is not local. Marquis Carlo Coda Nunziante brought it back over 50 years ago from central Africa where he lived and worked for many years.