hill on which it stood. Nothing is known about the construction of the castrum at the end of the 10th century and very little about the following two centuries. In the 11th century, the castle and village comprised basic layout of a fortified hilltop with an adjacent older settlement lining the Via Francigena that passed on the northern side of the rocky protuberance of Mount Pezzulano. XIII & XIV centuries The structure that emerges from documents of the 13th and 14th centuries shows an irregularly ellipsoidal enclosure that follows the contours of the natural relief. The castle comprises a residential wing with a chapel, leaning against the eastern side, a massive square central tower and a semi-circular false tower in the southern corner. During the 13th century, the castle gate, a pit and an oven are mentioned, as are wooden shingle and tile roofs. In 1212, the castle chapel, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, is mentioned. In 1268, an aula castri, or courtroom, is mentioned for the first time, and in 1307 a sala castri is positioned next to the courtroom and intended for both social life and formal government. Fourteenth-century documents testify to a multi-storey residential wing with reception rooms and a chapel at the upper levels and service rooms and cellars on the ground floor. This wing overlooked an upper inner courtyard with stables, a bread oven and the granerium, used to store the proceeds in kind from the payment of banna (taxes). On 24 February 1360, Amedeo VII Count of Savoy, known as the Red Count, was born here, and in 1368 Phillip II of Piedmont, the rebel prince who had ruled Turin on behalf of the Green Count (who whose court was based on the other side of the Alps) was imprisoned there while awaiting a sentence of death by drowning in the Lake of Avigliana. Finally, in August 1449, the old castle saw the birth of Bona of Savoy, future wife of the powerful Duke of Milan Galeazzo Maria Sforza. XV century onwards After the period of splendour of the Savoy court, from the 15th century until its destruction, the castle was simply a fortress in the lower Susa Valley. Often damaged and then rebuilt, most recently by Amedeo di Castellamonte in 1655, the castle was finally destroyed using mines by the French troops of Marshal Catinat in May 1691. It no longer needed be