The Castle of Chignolo Po: the Versailles of Lombardy

Chignolo Po is a small Italian town in the province of Pavia in Lombardy. The municipality is located at the mouth of the Lambro river in the Po and is about thirty kilometers from the provincial capital cities of Pavia, Lodi and Piacenza. The town is home to one of the most beautiful castles in Italy: the Procaccini Castle in Chignolo Po. The palace was originally built by the Lombard King Liutprando in 740 AD. C. and was used as a fortress to control the Po river. About 200 years later the castle was entrusted to the Benedictine monks, who used it to host pilgrims traveling along the Via Francigena. Starting from the 13th century, the Castle became one of the major Lombard Feuds, on which the Pusterla family settled until 1340, subsequently involved in an anti-Discontian conspiracy and exterminated. Later came the Federici and the Cusani, to whom we owe the period of maximum splendor of the Castle. From 1700 to 1730 it was enlarged and transformed from a medieval fortress into a real eighteenth-century palace at the behest of the owner of the time, Cardinal Agostino Cusani Visconti; for this reason it was nicknamed 'Versailles of Lombardy'. Currently the Castle is the private property of the Procaccini family, but it is possible to visit it and organize events both inside and outside.