Malaspina Tower and the remains of the medieval complex
At the end of Piazza Castello stands the Rocca, which housed a fortified village dating from the 11th century, unfortunately largely demolished in recent times. It can be reached across a rise over the moat in front and through a medieval entrance and guard gate.
The original layout of the defensive structure certainly dates back at least to the 10th century, since it is recorded at that time as a residence of the Aleramic dynasty that ruled the Acqui countryside. It was in the castle of Visone, in fact, that on 4 May 991 Marquis Anselmo and his wife Gisla signed the founding charter of the Benedictine abbey of San Quintino di Spigno.
The signing took place a few years after the Saracen raids which, between 905 and 936, had brought destruction and desolation, even laying siege to the city of Acqui itself. This important document sanctioned, at the beginning of the second millennium, the Aleramic dynasty's right of dominion over a vast territory between Liguria and Piedmont, independent of the power of the bishops of Savona and Acqui and destined to shape the history of these lands for many centuries to come.
At the beginning of the 20th century important ruins of the fortified complex still remained, together with numerous medieval houses of the old ricetto, as a 1911 yearbook records: «Visone is notable for the ruins of its ancient castle and for some houses of the medieval period» (Annuario generale italiano, Rome, 1911, p. 248).
Of the castle, the result of a thorough late fifteenth-century remodelling carried out under the rule of the Malaspina marquises, only a few ruined remains survive today, among which the crenellated tower still stands essentially intact, and can now be climbed to the top thanks to the recent restoration of the internal stairs.
Of the old medieval ricetto only a couple of houses remain, the rest having unfortunately been demolished in recent times to make way for the Belvedere square.
In 1968 maestro Ernesto Ferrari (1894-1973), an Acqui-born artistic blacksmith of international renown, dedicated to the tower of Visone a precious embossed iron medallion, now in the Ferrari Museum in Acqui Terme, and a poem:
A lofty and ancient tower
A lofty and ancient tower,
ruined but not decrepit,
still rises firm and strong
against the sky and through the centuries.
How many events, happy and sad,
of the human history of peoples,
of things and happenings great and small,
you witnessed, mute and deaf.
You still stand firm and strong,
and time does not frighten you;
the neglect of human carelessness
does not trouble you yet.
Of thousands upon thousands of storms and tempests,
gales of every kind,
season and direction,
nor the dreadful frosts
of long winters:
none had power over you.
No one has won, and all have lost.
The hawk circles in the solemn, silent sky,
the swallows chirp around,
and in the deep dark night
rises the mournful song
of the visiting owl.
