Castle of Schifanoia

It rises in the Val di Rasina valley, which takes its name from the river of the same name, the last offshoot south of the Gualdese territory. The castle of Schifanoia rises amidst ancient trees and fertile land, near the town of Valfabbrica. The current name derives from "schivar la boredom", a toponym also used in other houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to emphasize that these places had to be a holiday and a rest. Built in the fourteenth century, the first news dates back to 1377. With confidence in September 1486 the castle was owned by Bernardino Ranieri, and being the latter very active politically in Perugia, always allied with the family Oddi against the bloody struggles with the Baglioni family, the castle suffered the fortunes of its owner's policies. Sacked and semi-destroyed in 1480, the same fate was in 1491, because some night before the young son of Bernardino entered Perugia at night, killing as many partisans of the Baglioni found. Immediate reaction of the Perugian family, of course, who, having arrived with over six hundred armed men, under the castle, unloaded "two towers, and opened the walls of the fortress in several places, burned the rest ...".
With the conquest of the Baglioni the castle was left by the Ranieri, who in the meantime had taken refuge in Urbino, and a quarter of a century passed before they could return. In the sixteenth century with Filippo Ranieri rebuilt the destroyed castle, and joined the property several land, but a century later, 1624, the property passed from the Ranieri family to Della Penna, since Francesca, the last heir, went in marry to the captain Paolo Della Penna. In the nineteenth century it belonged to the Oddi-Baglioni family, and subsequently it came to the Roman family of the Torlonia princes, which is still owned today.
Don Giulio Torlonia organized hunting trips on horseback, in which many members of important families took part. These were the years when, in the summer, the Roman nobility loved to spend their holidays in their Umbrian estates. At the end of the twentieth century they equipped the castle with a pipeline for drinking water, and today, although uninhabited, it still looks majestic and imposing as it once was, with covered towers, an internal courtyard and large halls in the stately home. Documentary sources: Amoni D. (1999), Castelli fortresses and fortresses of Umbria, Perugia, Quattroemme.