On the border between the provinces of Brescia, Cremona and Bergamo lies the small town of Torre Pallavicina. The fortunes of the village are linked to the family of the Barbò Counts since 1070, on the land where Tristano Sforza built a tower during the 1400s, called the Tristano Tower, for defensive purposes. In the same place, in the 1500s, Adalberto Marchese Pallavicino, from whom the village then took its name, built an extravagant palace, with a rather strange motivation: "... for no longer wanting to follow ungrateful principles ..." and for "...a place of peace for himself and his friends (SIBI ET AMICIS)". This reasoning is carved on the stone above the façade’s porticoes.
The structure is one of the most peculiar examples of commingling between a historic fortress, with a typically military character and a seventeenth-century residential building, splendid and harmonious. The park of plane and linden trees is the unique setting for these two buildings so different yet complementary. Popular tradition tells that one of the passages departing from the under the tower leads to the nearby Soncino castle but attempts made by the village’s inhabitants did not give significant results, so the entrance to the tunnel was walled up.
On the border between the provinces of Brescia, Cremona and Bergamo lies the small town of Torre Pallavicina. The fortunes of the village are linked to the family of the Barbò Counts since 1070, on the land where Tristano Sforza built a tower during the 1400s, called the Tristano Tower, for defensive purposes. In the same place, in the 1500s, Adalberto Marchese Pallavicino, from whom the village then took its name, built an extravagant palace, with a rather strange motivation: "... for no longer wanting to follow ungrateful principles ..." and for "...a place of peace for himself and his friends (SIBI ET AMICIS)". This reasoning is carved on the stone above the façade’s porticoes.
The structure is one of the most peculiar examples of commingling between a historic fortress, with a typically military character and a seventeenth-century residential building, splendid and harmonious. The park of plane and linden trees is the unique setting for these two buildings so different yet complementary. Popular tradition tells that one of the passages departing from the under the tower leads to the nearby Soncino castle but attempts made by the village’s inhabitants did not give significant results, so the entrance to the tunnel was walled up.
