Palazzo vertemate and its connoisseur

Having the pleasure of visiting the splendid residence in the municipality of Piuro under the guidance of Ralph Oliver Gschwind Guanella offers the opportunity to appreciate details and secrets known to few.

To call Ralph Oliver Gschwind Guanella the “custodian” of Palazzo Vertemate Franchi is certainly an understatement. The fact that he has lived for years with his family within the grounds of this noble sixteenth-century residence rightfully makes him the foremost expert on the entire building. Ralph trained as a luthier at the school in Cremona, the city of Antonio Stradivari — a background that has made him a sharp and knowledgeable observer of the magnificent wooden decorations adorning the palazzo’s furnishings and splendid ceilings.

It was partly for this reason that in 2016 he was awarded the honor of Cavaliere dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic). This is why having the good fortune to visit the building with him — the last surviving testimony of the ancient county of Piuro, destroyed in 1618 — is a precious and unique experience, full of anecdotes and curiosities about the events and people who have passed through the palazzo over time. Palazzo Vertemate, with its vineyard, vegetable gardens, and sumptuous Italian-style gardens, represents the finest example of Renaissance architecture in the Alps. Built as a hunting residence for the brothers Luigi and Guglielmo Vertemate, the building was constructed in the early 1500s at immense financial cost. The frescoes, the refined wood carvings, and the elegant halls stand as precious testimony to the role Piuro played over the centuries — before being buried in a single night under an enormous mass of earth that erased its existence and riches forever.