Cavour’s relics:
original objects and environments
to relive the Count’s stay
at the Castle.
This room is dedicated to the great Piedmontese statesman: on the walls you can see information on the situation of the Grinzane estate and the wine produced at the time, on the marin (the cryptogam of the vine, a disease which, in Piedmontese, takes its name from the hot, humid Mediterranean wind blowing from the east/south-east) and on Cavour’s two most valuable collaborators: General Paolo Francesco Staglieno and the French oenologist Louis Oudart.
Some Cavour relics are displayed in the showcase: the mayor’s sash, original documents (dated 1832, the year Cavour arrived in Grinzane and became mayor of the village, and 1844, with an autograph on the left side).
You will also be able to see footage of the Count’s political career, from 1850 to 1861, the year in which Italy was unified.
The bedroom where Cavour dreamt of a united Italy.
At the back of the Cavour Room, you will find a reconstruction of his bedroom. Actually, during his stays at the Castle, the Count slept in what is now the “Hall of Masks”. The furniture and fittings you will find here have been moved from that room and are the orginal ones: the bed is in Empire style, according to the fashion of the time, of French manufacture, with a half-boat shape.
In those days, the bed mattresses were straw mattresses, very high and full of corn leaves. That’s why the Count, who was short and stocky, used the ladder you see to climb up, and which concealed inside… the chamber pot!
The room was simple, functional, without any hint of luxury or ostentation.
We wonder how many times, in this bed, Count Camillo fell asleep thinking about his plan to make the Kingdom of Sardinia a European power and to unify Italy…
