Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 6 hours ago
Without a castle, a fortress, a village; alone, different, balconies and windows, stairways... One spring day, driving along the road that connects Castelnuovo Scrivia to Tortona, I saw it, impossible not to stop, turn the car around and look around. A tower inside a farmhouse, I looked at it from the outside, without entering the internal courtyard, I truly looked at it with amazement, with wonder, how could it stay up? The first impression was of a construction built in different eras, and not from a single plan, assuming there was a plan, it seemed built haphazardly, almost wobbly, but beautiful and interesting. How could I not do some research? The tower, crooked and angular, which seems to have come from the fantasies of Gaudi and Coppedè, is located near the A21 motorway near the Castelnuovo service station and is known as the witches' house. And, like a good haunted house, it seems to appear and disappear into the landscape, making it truly difficult to reach. The history of that strange construction, a 34-meter-high tower, begins when it was built in 1910 by its owner, Anselmo, a railway engineer and member of the Gobba family, well-known and esteemed bankers in the area between Vercelli and Tortona. The large farmhouse where it stands dates back to the 17th century, and was called Cascina Torrione, but at the time it had no tower, so Gobba, driven by curiosity, decided to make that nickname real, at a time when Gothic style dominated European and Italian art. The tower was designed by Vencelslao Borzani, one of the most famous and esteemed Genoese architects of the early 20th century, very active in Piedmont and Lombardy. Anselmo Gobba's daughter, Fernanda, known as "The Bride of the Torrione," married Ugo Ojetti, one of the most renowned Italian literary and publishing authorities of the interwar period, in Tortona in 1905. It is said that Ojetti wanted to transform the tower into a large cultural center, but ultimately preferred a property in Tuscany, and so the farmhouse was sold to the Rangone family. During the war, the tower served as a German headquarters, and prisoners were held in the upper rooms. Today, the tower is closed to the public, as Cascina Torrione is still owned by the Rangone family. A dragon-shaped gutter can be glimpsed at the foot of the tower, while the ground floor is cluttered with junk and the staircase ascends along a path that is partly internal and partly external, like the coils of a serpent moving in a spiral. Near a section of the staircase leading to the first floors, a lion's head has detached from its statue, while other stone lion statues remain intact. The rooms on the upper floors, now completely bare, are rich in paintings and decorations featuring the common thread of lions and the Star of David, a reminder of the Jewish roots of that area between Lombardy and Piedmont. A history spanning over a hundred years, which still today can tell many stories of events in the Piedmont countryside, just a stone's throw from the hills.
Without a castle, a fortress, a village; alone, different, balconies and windows, stairways... One spring day, driving along the road that connects Castelnuovo Scrivia to Tortona, I saw it, impossible not to stop, turn the car around and look around. A tower inside a farmhouse, I looked at it from the outside, without entering the internal courtyard, I truly looked at it with amazement, with wonder, how could it stay up? The first impression was of a construction built in different eras, and not from a single plan, assuming there was a plan, it seemed built haphazardly, almost wobbly, but beautiful and interesting. How could I not do some research? The tower, crooked and angular, which seems to have come from the fantasies of Gaudi and Coppedè, is located near the A21 motorway near the Castelnuovo service station and is known as the witches' house. And, like a good haunted house, it seems to appear and disappear into the landscape, making it truly difficult to reach. The history of that strange construction, a 34-meter-high tower, begins when it was built in 1910 by its owner, Anselmo, a railway engineer and member of the Gobba family, well-known and esteemed bankers in the area between Vercelli and Tortona. The large farmhouse where it stands dates back to the 17th century, and was called Cascina Torrione, but at the time it had no tower, so Gobba, driven by curiosity, decided to make that nickname real, at a time when Gothic style dominated European and Italian art. The tower was designed by Vencelslao Borzani, one of the most famous and esteemed Genoese architects of the early 20th century, very active in Piedmont and Lombardy. Anselmo Gobba's daughter, Fernanda, known as "The Bride of the Torrione," married Ugo Ojetti, one of the most renowned Italian literary and publishing authorities of the interwar period, in Tortona in 1905. It is said that Ojetti wanted to transform the tower into a large cultural center, but ultimately preferred a property in Tuscany, and so the farmhouse was sold to the Rangone family. During the war, the tower served as a German headquarters, and prisoners were held in the upper rooms. Today, the tower is closed to the public, as Cascina Torrione is still owned by the Rangone family. A dragon-shaped gutter can be glimpsed at the foot of the tower, while the ground floor is cluttered with junk and the staircase ascends along a path that is partly internal and partly external, like the coils of a serpent moving in a spiral. Near a section of the staircase leading to the first floors, a lion's head has detached from its statue, while other stone lion statues remain intact. The rooms on the upper floors, now completely bare, are rich in paintings and decorations featuring the common thread of lions and the Star of David, a reminder of the Jewish roots of that area between Lombardy and Piedmont. A history spanning over a hundred years, which still today can tell many stories of events in the Piedmont countryside, just a stone's throw from the hills.
![Venezia walking vlog [part 1]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/S0k_ZVtcTrY/mqdefault.jpg "Venezia walking vlog [part 1]
The first municipality in the Veneto region by surface area and second by population after Verona, it includes both island and mainland territories and is structured around the two main centres of Venice (in the centre of the lagoon of the same name) and Mestre (on the mainland). It is part of the Eurocities network of the largest European cities. The city was the capital of the Serenissima Republic of Venice for 1,100 years and is known in this regard as the Serenissima, the Dominant and the Queen of the Adriatic: for its urban peculiarities and its artistic heritage, it is universally considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world, declared, together with its lagoon, a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, which has contributed to making it the second Italian city after Rome with the highest tourist flow. Between the 10th and 16th centuries it was one of the greatest naval and mercantile powers in the Mediterranean, with interests in particular towards the East. Together with Cannes and Berlin, it is considered one of the capitals of European cinema, thanks to the International Film Festival.")
