Before the Durazzo built their palazzo on Via del Campo, before they became bankers to the Republic of Genoa, before they arrived from Albania fleeing the Ottoman sword — there was already a castle on the hill above the Po.
A charter signed by Charlemagne in 805 records a Cortem Magnam Nomine Gabianam. By the twelfth century it had stone walls and a garrison. By the thirteenth, it was hosting victory feasts — in 1245, the coalition of Monferrato celebrated the Battle of Gamerario within its halls, and the Guelph presence in Piedmont ended here, among these stones.
Then came the Durazzo.
In 1624, Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga of Mantua owed the Genoese family a great deal of money — more than he could pay. So he paid with something better: a castle, a marquisate, and the vineyards that surrounded them. Agostino Durazzo, banker and botanist, accepted the medieval fortress and its land, and his family never let go.
What they did, instead, was plant.
The Durazzo were obsessed with vines. Their archives tell of wines shipped to the Polish court of Henry III of Valois in 1574, of aged vintages ferried to the d’Este court in Ferrara, of standing orders from the Archdukes of Austria. They developed the Bosco grape — a white mutation of Barbera — and sent it west to colonise the terraces of the Ligurian Riviera, where it became the backbone of Cinque Terre wine. What remained in Monferrato they refined into one of Italy’s oldest and smallest appellations: Gabiano DOC, barely three hectares, still cultivated today by the same family that planted them.
Four hundred years of bottles sleep in the infernotto — the castle’s deepest cellar, cut into the hill. Vintages from 1804 share the darkness with nineteenth-century wines from the Generalife Estate at the Alhambra in Granada, a remnant of the family’s role in the Spanish Reconquista. Nobody opens them. They are there to remember.
Above ground, the castle breathes. Twelve suites occupy the restored buildings of the estate, each one looking out over the amphitheatre of vineyards that curves toward the Alps. A monumental boxwood labyrinth — designed in the 1930s by the architect Lamberto Cusani and restored by Marchesa Matilde Durazzo Pallavicini — winds through the grounds, its hedges now head-high, its centre still a secret. The Ristorante 3 Orologi, named for three antique clocks that have marked time in the castle tower for longer than anyone can remember, serves what the kitchen garden and the Monferrato seasons provide: white truffle shaved at the table in November, wild asparagus in April, the estate’s own honey in every month between.
This is not a day trip. It is a homecoming.
As a guest of Palazzo Durazzo Suites, you are a guest of the family — and the family’s country estate is yours to explore. Our concierge arranges everything: you simply arrive.
The road.
A private car collects you from Via Gramsci after breakfast. Ninety minutes through the Ligurian hills, the landscape opening as the motorway gives way to the narrow roads of the Monferrato. Your driver knows the way; your driver waits.
The castle.
You enter through the same gate the Gonzaga dukes used. A guided tour takes you through the frescoed rooms, the medieval fortifications, the labyrinth. The hedges are taller than you expect. Finding the centre is harder than it looks.
The cellars.
A descent into the twelfth-century vaults. The barrique room smells of oak and damp stone. Your guide walks you through the private collection — bottles that predate Italian unification — and then seats you for a tasting of the estate’s current wines: the Gabiano Riserva “A Matilde Giustiniani”, the Grignolino, the Chardonnay, the rosé. Local cheeses and salumi from the Monferrato arrive alongside. Nobody rushes you.
Lunch.
A table at 3 Orologi, in the old vinegar cellar. The menu is short because the garden is small and the chef uses what grew that week. You eat slowly. The view from the terrace is the kind of view that makes you forget what day it is.
The return.
Your driver brings you back to Genoa in time for aperitivo. You sit in the Salone Durazzo with a glass of the castle’s wine in the family’s city palazzo, and the circle closes — the same circle the Durazzo drew four hundred years ago, when a banker looked at a hilltop and saw something worth more than money.
To arrange your day at Castello di Gabiano, speak to our concierge or write to info@palazzodurazzo.com.
Prenota il tuo soggiorno