8.Doria Castle at Dolceacqua

The first document that mentions Dolceacqua dates back to 1151; in fact it was in the twelfth century that the counts of Ventimiglia built the first nucleus of the castle.The castle underwent several transformations. The primitive feudal structure, defended at the end of the thirteenth century by the circular tower, was enlarged and included in the fourteenth century in a larger city wall. At the end of the Renaissance period the castle became a grandiose fortified noble residence, with impressive defensive systems. After having resisted numerous sieges, however, it could not oppose the Franco-Hispanic heavy artillery, which partially destroyed it on July 27, 1744 during an episode of the War of the Austrian Succession.No longer inhabited by the Doria family, who moved to the sixteenth-century building adjacent to the parish church, it suffered the last outrages of the 1887 earthquake.