The monastery of Castino

Castino has three monasteries. The one ddicated to santa Maria delle Grazie stands on the hill in front of the town, halfway up, on one of the many old streets leading to Alba. The Saint Martin one is in the plain, near the town.

There’s then the one called simply “the Monastery”, in front of the parish church, built inthe first half of the seventeenth century. Abbesses of this monastery often were members of the Del Carretto family.

It’s believed that “the nuns in Castino owned more than three hundred “giornate” of land, today divided between the farms now called Case nuove, Fontane, Scavini, Gironi, Pozzo, Valle presso S. Rocco, Roviglione in the Belbo valley…”.

The features of the monastery that it’s still possible to see today (only partly restored) are a clear trace of its richness. A two-floor structure, it has a wide and elegant balcony, secluded though grand, fully contrasting the simpleness of the surrounding houses.

The nuns left the monastery on September, 22nd, 1802, because of the Napoleonic laws on the suppression of religious orders. The building is today a private house.