With this tour you will have an immersive experience, visiting a 13th-century manor with the original armor of the soldiers who lived there, visiting the dungeons where enemies were locked up, and tasting the ancient recipes that refreshed the fighters.
Located on the border between Padua and Vicenza and built in the mid-1200s, Valbona Castle is a military structure, where today you can also dine, designed to defend and offend, inhabited only by soldiers and a captain. The manor was involved in the struggle between the Scaligeri and Carraresi: the feudal lords of Orgiano took it in 1313, but were driven out of it as early as 1319. The Carraresi, during the time they owned the castle, turned the entrance gate into a customs house.In addition to the "old customs house," the following can be seen: the hall of arms, the knights' hall, a courtyard with stables for horses, a well, two drawbridges, and the prisons. Related to the latter are registers that give us the names of prisoners and convicts up to the year 1420. The spaces of the manor give us the opportunity to observe technological innovations: those put in place by the feudal lords of Orgiano. Already Counts of Agugliaro, the feudal lords of Orgiano applied their superior military techniques to dig ditches and drainage canals, reclaimed the land and introduced pig farming. This, once salted, was preserved longer so it was transported through the Bisatto canal to the Serenissima Republic of Venice where it became one of the foodstuffs of the sailors who crossed the Adriatic and the Mediterranean aboard galleys.
During the tour, all facets of daily life will be recounted without neglecting the culinary customs and traditions of the time while also lingering on the typical recipes of the time (fish with mushrooms, risi e bisi, "minestra maridà," gameberi di Valbona etc.).
