The Rooms.
A visit to the Museum is completed by the fascinating Historical Rooms, for an authentic journey through time, from the 16th century to the present day.
Hall of Masks.
A wedding treasure hidden for over a century.
This room has a very peculiar story.
It is named after the magnificent painted ceiling with trabeations, dating back to 1547 and restored in 1960, embellished with 156 “masks”, a technical term given by scholars to the reproduction of faces, heraldic coats of arms and allegories.
It was built and decorated by Pietrino Belli, the castle’s owner at the time, a well-known jurist and diplomat from Alba, who commissioned this as an eternal reminder of his marriage to his beloved, the noblewoman Giulia Damiani.
Coats of arms, portraits and fantastic creatures, a real treat for the eyes.
Apart from the coats of arms of the married couple’s families, the red bull on a white field for the Belli family and a small silver eight-pointed star repeated several times for the Damiani family, there are also various allegories with representations of animals, metaphors for human qualities and virtues: for example, the dog symbolises loyalty and the lion embodies courage.
Another group of tiles features male and female portraits, probably members of the two families. There are several panel paintings with children, evoking the symbolism of love, who are playing different musical instruments such as bagpipes, drums, flutes, viols and lutes.
We came close
to never seeing this work of art
… because of Cavour.
In Cavour’s time, the Hall of Masks was used as his personal living area, divided into two rooms: one was his study, the other his bedroom. As winters are very harsh in this area, the Count decided to lower the vault to improve heat retention and ordered the construction of a false ceiling made of reeds and plaster. Therefore the precious 16th century ceiling was covered and concealed until 1960 when, during the restoration of the castle, the false ceiling was removed and, to everyone’s surprise, the spectacular painted ceiling was discovered!
The Hall of Masks can be visited and is open to the public. It is also used as Council Chamber for the Municipality of Grinzane, where weddings are held, and as a congress hall and for events.
Here, every year, on the second Sunday of November, the Alba White Truffle World Auction takes place. It is satellite-linked and broadcasted to several major European and non-European cities, such as London, Paris, Moscow, New York, Los Angeles and Hong Kong. This is a worldwide event with a charitable purpose: a large part of the funds raised is donated to charity, to support ethical causes or scientific research.
This room today houses the Chapters of the Order of the Knights of the Truffle and Wines of Alba, an enogastronomic confraternity founded in 1967 with the aim of protecting and relaunching local customs and traditions, with particular attention to the cuisine and great wines of this land.
Room of the Frescoes.
From the rococo of the Gonzagas to conscious wine consumption.
The Room of the Frescoes consists of three bays featuring cross vaults, largely frescoed with transpositions of 16th-century paintings in the style of Giulio Romano, a pupil of the great Raphael. The artist worked as a painter and architect at the court of the Gonzaga, Dukes of Mantua, under whose rule the territory of Alba and Grinzane remained until 1630. For this reason there are profound similarities between some of the rooms in Palazzo Te, in particular the Sala di Psiche (chamber of Psyche) and the Sala delle Aquile (chamber of the Eagles) frescoed by Romano, and the frescoes in Grinzane Castle.
In the past, the room was a stately home, but today it houses the permanent exhibition “Wine and Health”, which is organized by the Wine and Health Observatory. The exhibition shows the positive correlations between moderate and conscious wine consumption and health in a captivating technical and scientific way.
Room of the Alba White Truffle.
This space is dedicated to Tuber magnatum Pico, the Alba White Truffle, one of the finest expressions of Italian and international cuisine, known and appreciated since ancient times and the protagonist every year of the famous Fair named after it since 1928, the year in which the far-sighted Alba restaurateur Giacomo Morra launched the first edition.
Truffle hunting is a practice that truffle hunters have handed down from generation to generation, and it is tied to ancient knowledge, a family calendar, a perfect knowledge of the territory and the very fine nose of a faithful dog trained to detect the scent of this precious mushroom that grows and matures underground.
The truffle hunter, in Piedmontese language Trifolau, thanks to experience-traced paths among poplars and linden trees, oaks and willows, uses a special hoe to gently extract the truffle discovered by the dog and carefully rearranges the soil to encourage its reproduction.
In 2021, the practice of Truffle Hunting and Extraction was recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and is safeguarded by it.
A specific section is dedicated to the Alba White Truffle World Auction.
Every year since 1999, at the beginning of November, the Castle of Grinzane Cavour hosts the Alba White Truffle World Auction, an event organized by the Enoteca Regionale Piemontese Cavour to celebrate the prestigious Alba White Truffle, which is put up for Auction – in combination with the large formats of Barolo and Barbaresco – for charitable purposes and solidarity initiatives, through exclusive international live streamings with the world’s most important metropolises.
Since 1999, more than €7 million has been raised for charity through live satellite broadcasts from New York, Tokyo, Munich, Los Angeles, London, Hong Kong, Berlin, Merano, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Dubai, Moscow, Seoul, Vienna, Frankfurt and Singapore.
The XXIII edition in 2022 raised a record amount of over 600,000 euros for charity. The final lot of the prized Alba White Truffle, weighing 950 grams, was sold to a generous Hong Kong businessman for the impressive sum of 184,000 euros.
