Frassinello Monferrato Travel Guide
Discover Frassinello Monferrato with Piedmont Travel Guide. The original nucleus of the village was built in the resort of Lignano, a name derived from the gentilitial “Laennius”, probably the name of a Roman gens who resided in the area between Frassinello and Camagna. A funerary stone conserved in Lignano remembers the late Lucio Herennio from the Pollia tribe belonging to the lX Regio Augustea which included at the time all this territory.
The place name Frassinello derives from fraxinus, ash (frassino) which some scholars link to the presence of the Saracens in the territory that would have called the place of their settlement with the name of their headquarters in Provence, Le Garde Freinet. Indeed, according to Chronicle of Novalesa precisely at Castro Fraxenedello a horde of Saracens would be deafeted, in 964.
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The medieval settlement
The first medieval settlement is proven in the eleventh century in a document in which was recognized the possession of the feud to ‘Episcopate of Vercelli’. The hamlet is dominated by the Castle of the Counts Sacchi Nemours and still keeps segments of fortifications as well as the fortress that surrounded in in the Middle Ages.
The fortified complex has C-shape plant with an internal courtyard and garden. The square towers that adorn the main front were crenelated while inside, the vaults of the halls are decorated with fine frescoes, eighteenth century, and in the main hall floor mosaic with coat of arms of Sacchi Nemours family.
Built at the foot of the castle and inside the walls circle, is the parish church of the Assumption, whose original building dates from the fifteenth century, it holds a Greek cross plan and a neoclassical facade with simple and stern lines, adorned only by four lesenes and the tympanum.
Just outside the residential center and surrounded by vineyard landscape ,there is the fine country chapel of San Bernardo characterized by beautiful Baroque style, hexagonal plan and made entirely of brick masonry not plastered. At Frassinello there are interesting examples of productive wine cellar within castles, such as Castello di Lignano. The ancient cellars built after the mid-1800s, witnesses of the great wine-making tradition to Lignano Castle, now house the winemaking and bottling facilities, the vats and autoclaves.