12/09/2019
Castello di San Sebastiano Po. The first documents relating to the town of San Sebastiano put it under the lordship of the Radicati, becoming in the following centuries the theater of wars for the supremacy of Piedmont, first among the Savoys and the Marquises of Monferrato, then with the involvement of Spagnoli and French. The fortunes of the castle in that period are not documented. Instead, the date of 1761 is precise, in which the Count of San Sebastiano, Paolo Federico Novarina, commissioned the architect Bernardo Vittone exponent of the Piedmontese Baroque, to restructure the entire castle complex, after having seen it at work in the renovation of the adjacent parish church. Count Novarina, who was commander of the Piedmontese regiment in 1763, had participated in the battle of the Assietta, 1747, and on that occasion, to keep his soldiers firmly in front of the predominantly French troops of number, he had launched the famous phrase: "Fieui, bugiè nen! (Guys, don't move!) ". From this episode derived a term with which even today the Piedmontese are called "bougia nèn", that is, people who do not move. The castle was the destination of illustrious visitors: among others Napoleon I, since Count Pietro Novarina had joined and supported the French Republic. In honor of the French emperor, a rare plant, the biolca ginkgo, which still exists today, was planted in its passage in 1810. It is said that Cavour also passed through the castle, being his secretary but also trusted by the owner count. But it is from the beginning of the XIX century that the castle sees its maximum splendor, when Pietro Bagetti, Piedmontese painter and architect, frescoes the gallery. In 1810 Xavier Kurten, German, a garden architect, designed the park, which soon became the study field of the University of Botany in Turin. In the park there is an Italian garden with parterres of boxwood and roses: in the glorious times of its history, the castle housed up to 3000 species of plants and flowers. Today there is still an orchard in memory of the medieval pomari, and a greenhouse next to the neoclassical temple: which has the sole function of containing access to another section of the garden