Malaspina Castle, Fosdinovo

The story

The Malaspina castle stands in Fosdinovo, in the province of Massa-Carrara, in the historic region of Lunigiana in Tuscany. Italian Wikipedia calls it the largest and best preserved of the Lunigiana castles. The history below comes from that article, a secondary source.

A document from Lucca of 1084 mentions a castrum at Fosdinovo, and the castle was built in the second half of the 12th century. In 1306 the Peace of Castelnuovo, negotiated by Dante, settled the dispute between the Malaspina and the bishop of Luni. The article places Spinetta Malaspina in 1340 and has Charles IV ratify the marquisate in 1355. Late in the 15th century Gabriele II restored the castle in the Renaissance manner, and by 1636 the village counted about 800 households. The article ends Malaspina rule with the French Revolutionary period; the castle then passed through other hands, including the dukes of Modena, before a Malaspina bought it back. The castle was occupied by the Germans in 1944-45, bombed by the Allies on 23 April 1945, and restored between 1960 and 1965. A tradition has Dante sleeping in a room now named after him, and the castle’s own site presents it as his room; we found no document for it.

The article also reports, as fact and not verified elsewhere, that the marquis Giacomo II accused his son Andrea of attempted parricide, and that another son, Ippolito, was killed by his brother Ferdinando, who was then executed. Giacomo II died in 1663, which will matter below.

The legend

Two stories dominate. Neither rests on a document we could read.

The first is Bianca Maria Aloisia Malaspina, said to have been walled up alive by her father for a relationship with a stable hand. The castle’s own page, Tra storie e leggende, read on 6 November 2026, dates this to 1620 and says she was walled in with her dog and a boar, the boar a symbol of rebellion. It says stains on the throne-room ceiling show the father, the daughter and the two animals, and that many claim to have seen her spirit, or a heart beating in her father’s bed. Other tellings disagree. Italian Wikipedia dates her death to 1690, or to the 13th century depending on the version, and names the father as Giacomo II or an ancestor; it notes that Giacomo II died in 1663, so a death in 1690 would rule him out, though 1620 falls within his time. The Destinazione Terra blog (2019) places her in the mid-13th century, and lunigiana.uk has her bricked up in 1636. An archived page of the castle’s older website names her parents as Jacopo (Giacomo) Malaspina and Oliva Grimaldi; lunigiana.uk has Olivia. A story whose key details shift from one telling to the next is more likely a legend that grew than a record. Lunigiana.uk and an Italian Wikipedia article on local legends add that bones of a girl and two animals were found during work in the basement, but they give no date or report, and we found no excavation record. We found no named witness either.

The second is the marchioness Cristina Adelaide Pallavicino (1652-1723), who “si racconta” (the Wikipedia phrasing, meaning it is told) killed her lovers by dropping them through a trapdoor at the foot of her bed. The article then describes three spring-loaded trapdoors with blades fixed at the bottom and an iron arm for hanging the condemned. It sources this to a blog, Destinazione Terra, and to a 2010 book by Dadà (page 64). We found no archaeological or archival evidence for any of it.

The oldest trace of either story is not established. The oldest we could date are web pages of the castle itself, as kept by the Internet Archive: the marchioness’s trapdoor on a page captured in December 2008, and Bianca on one captured in February 2013. Italian Wikipedia cites a Google Books item titled “Antiche leggende. Storia perduta” and a blog, and we found no 17th-century text. A search of an American newspaper archive for “Fosdinovo”, with spelling variants, returned nothing, and we did not search Italian archives. On this evidence the legends may be later than the people they name, but we cannot date them.

Only Bianca is reported as a ghost. The marchioness is a character in a cruelty legend, and the sources we read do not say she walks.

What remains today

The castle survives, restored after wartime damage, and is furnished throughout, according to Italian Wikipedia. It is a protected historic dwelling under the state heritage authority. It is privately owned by a family descended through the female line from the Malaspina. Italian Wikipedia lists a Camera del trabocchetto with a torture chamber below it among the rooms, and the Destinazione Terra blog says a trapdoor is there at the foot of the bed. That shows a trapdoor, not that the legend is true.

Visiting

The castle is open by guided visit, and the official site (castellodifosdinovo.it, read 6 November 2026) recommends booking online; it also rents out rooms. We did not read opening times, so check the site for current details. Ask guides where their stories come from: the ghost accounts we read come with no document behind them.

Sources

1. Wikimedia Commons category : Castello Malaspina (Fosdinovo) — Wikimedia Commons
2. Castello di Fosdinovo — Official site of the castle, 2026-11-06
3. Castello Malaspina (Fosdinovo) — Wikipedia (Italian)
4. Ghost Stories — lunigiana.uk
5. Il castello Malaspina e la leggenda del fantasma che respira — Destinazione Terra (blog), 2019-12-02
6. Il fantasma e la sua leggenda (archived page of the castle's older site, captured 21 Feb 2013; original gone) — Internet Archive, 2013-02-21
7. Official website
8. Storie e leggende della Lunigiana — Wikipedia (Italian)
9. The castle (archived page of the castle's older site, captured 27 Dec 2008; original gone) — Internet Archive, 2008-12-27
10. Tra storie e leggende — Official site of the castle, 2026-11-06
11. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.