Aosta · Italy
Tour Fromage
The name has no connection with cheese: it derives from the Casei family, local nobles who took possession of this Roman tower in the Middle Ages and established their residence in it. It is an account Aosta repeats: the Roman walls were too solid to be demolished, and so the powerful families installed themselves within them. A tower already built, walls two metres thick, a commanding position: whoever had the means appropriated it. Today it is an exhibition space, which constitutes a further reuse: the same stone stood guard, then housed a family, and now receives contemporary art.
Go deeper
Who were the Casei?
A medieval noble family of Aosta. Their name, in its Latin form, gave the French Fromage, and it stuck to the tower.
How many Roman towers survive?
The circuit had about twenty. Several are still standing, almost all because they were adapted to civil or religious use in the Middle Ages.
What is inside now?
Temporary exhibitions. It is worth checking the programme: going in lets you see the tower’s structure from the inside.
Where it is
More stories in Aosta
- Adret and envers
- When the railway arrived
- Arch of Augustus
- Regional Archaeological Museum
- The villages the city swallowed
- The Battle of the Queens
- Aosta Cathedral
- Church of Santo Stefano