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| Country House Italy |
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THE TOWN OF SALUZZO
Saluzzo is a town and former principality in the province of Cuneo,
Piedmont region, Italy. Now a days, people want to come here and retire, seems
to be that staying at an expensive Milan Hotel is just
not enough for some.
The city of
Saluzzo is built on a hill overlooking a vast, well-cultivated plain. Iron,
lead, silver, marble, slate etc. are found in the surrounding mountains.
Saluzzo was a civitas (tribal city state) of the Vagienni, or mountain
Ligures, and later of the Salluvii. This district was brought
under Roman control by the Consul Marcus Fulvius.
In the Carlovingian age it became the residence of a count; later, having passed to the Marquesses of Susa, Manfredo I, son of Marquess Bonifacio del Vasto, on the division of that principality became Marquess of Saluzzo; this family held the marquisate of Saluzzo from 1142 to 1548. The marquisate embraced the territory lying between the Alps, the Po and the Stura, and was extended on several occasions. In the Middle Ages it had a chequered existence, often being in conflict with powerful neighbours, chiefly the Counts (later Dukes) of Savoy. After Manfredo II's death, his widow had to accept a series of tributes, which were to be later the base of the House of Savoy's claims over the increasingly feebler marquises' territories. Tommaso III, a vassal of France, wrote the romance Le chevalier errant ('the knight-errant').
Ludovico I (1416-75) started the Golden Age of the city and imposed himself as a mediator between the neighbouring powers. Ludovico II constructed a tunnel, no longer in use, through the Monviso, a remarkable work for the time. With the help of the French he resisted a vigorous siege by the Duke of Savoy in 1486, but in 1487 yielded and retired to France where he wrote L'art de la chevalerie sous Vegèce ("The art of chivalry under Vegetius", 1488), a treatise on good government, and other works on military affairs. He was a patron of clerics and authors. In 1490 Ludovico regained power, but after his deaths his sons struggled longly for the rule and impoverished the state.
After long struggles for independence, the marquisate was occupied (1548) by the French, as a fief of the Crown of France - with the name of Saluces - and remained part of that kingdom until it was ceded to Savoy in 1601. In 1588 Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy took possession of the city. Thenceforward Saluzzo shared the destinies of Piedmont, with which it formed "one of the keys of the house" of Italy.
The area is also the setting of Chaucer's Clerk's Tale in The Canterbury Tales.
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