Queen of the castle

Staring out over the valley of the River Po, Carla talks of the castle as a refuge from her schedule in Paris where she lives, juggling the recording of a new album together with mothering four-year-old Aurélien, her son by her French boyfriend Raphaël Enthoven, a philosophy professor.

Her debut album two years ago, Quelqu’un M’a Dit (Somebody Told Me), was likened to Jane Birkin’s work and sold 1m copies in France. Music runs through her veins: her mother was a concert pianist, her father composed music and was the director of the Teatro Regio, Turin’s historic concert hall, and her grandfather wrote operas.

Carla’s father, Alberto, a wealthy industrialist whose non-musical day job was running the CEAT tyre-making empire, bought the castle in 1952. Built to guard the region of Piedmont from invasion, the castle has died several deaths, but has been resuscitated every time. Since the 11th century, when it is first mentioned in historical records, it was burnt to the ground in 1397, rebuilt, razed once more in 1705, and rebuilt again.

By the time Alberto bought it, the place was a near-wreck, and he spent the next three decades restoring and embellishing it. “There were no bathrooms, just one bath. We left that room half-finished to show what a state it was in then,” Carla says. Alberto put in central heating and built kitchens, bathrooms and lifts. “We put the lifts in 12 years ago,” explains Carla’s mother, “because we thought we were getting on.” Carla chips in:

“Thank God for the lifts! I found the stairs tiring even as a teenager. There are four floors, but the ceilings are very high.”

But it is on the decoration that Alberto lavished most effort. He restored ancient frescoes in the grotesque style, installed rare marquetry parquet, commissioned artisans to craft wood panelling, hung paintings and tapestries. In a nod to an 18th-century fad, he decorated the music room only with Chinese ornaments.

Precious artworks are peppered throughout the reception areas and private apartments, including a medieval crucifix with a life-size Christ and an image of the Virgin by Renaissance sculptor Luca della Robbia.

Alberto was a collector — of china, handkerchiefs, even flags — and to show part of his collection, Marisa has opened to the public for the first time the three main reception halls, where French, English and Italian miniature portraits from the 18th and 19th centuries are displayed. Contemporary artists’ videos from Turin’s Modern Art Gallery are also on show in vaulted rooms below.

Visitors can also see the terraced garden that Alberto fashioned out of the hillside, a soothing panorama of alleys flanked by rose bushes, geraniums and lemon trees next to the castle, and, beyond, lawns, fountains and orchards.

As children, Carla and her two siblings — her sister, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, the film director and actress, and her brother, Virginio, a graphic artist — lived in Turin but spent holidays and weekends at the castle.

“I remember my father telling us not to damage the works of art — no tennis in the living room,” Carla says.

Her favourite place is the dining room, a long vaulted room with frescoes of garlands of fruits and flowers, crystal chandeliers and antique chairs, and windows that look out on a terrace lined by lemon trees.

Her parents’ position at the heart of Turin’s musical life meant that guests at the castle included the likes of the diva Maria Callas, tenor Giuseppe di Stefano, pianist Artur Rubinstein and conductor Herbert von Karajan. The names meant little to Carla as a child, and what has stuck in her mind is her impression of the castle as “a very mysterious, magical place”.

Which is where the ghosts come in. Does she have a name for them? “We never saw them, but we know they are there. We heard them at night.” After a pause, she adds: “Of course, my brother says it’s rubbish.”

Ghosts or not, the castle was a happy place for her. “It was full of joy and full of people. There was a farm on the estate, and we used to visit the cows and the turkeys.”

In the nearby forest, Carla and her sister played cowboys and Indians with their brother; he ordered the girls should be taken prisoner, tied them to a tree, and sometimes went away and forgot all about them.

The family left for Paris in the 1970s, during the so-called “years of lead”, when the Red Brigade terrorists fought the political and economic establishment. The families of rich industrialists such as the Bruni Tedeschis were vulnerable to kidnappings for ransom.

They came to stay at the castle often, however, and Carla’s father brought with him artworks he had found in antique shops on the Quai Voltaire by the River Seine.

Carla’s parents returned to Turin in the 1980s, and she remembers, as a teenager, downing a magnum of champagne with some friends during one party at the castle.

Today, Carla says, the place still feels magical to her, but she is keen, as she puts it, to keep the castle alive: “I feel very strongly that houses have to stay alive, that if people don’t go to them, it shows in the walls themselves. They become sad if there is no life in the house.”

She has brought Aurélien to the castle only once, when he was six months old, which inevitably made her think of her own childhood. “I didn’t feel any nostalgia though, and

I don’t know if I could live here. But I’d like to spend some time here.

“It’s so hard to take time off. Maybe I could record some songs here — in Paris I always have to be in tiny studios where I’m cut off from everything.” Moments later, she poses for photographs sitting on a lawn in front of the castle, the first time she has ever posed at this home. Happy and relaxed, she does what the photographer asks, and when she gets up again she calls out with a big mischievous grin: “Is my bottom green?” Marisa plans to host sculpture and other exhibitions in future. “I hate immobility,” she says. “Immobility is like death. I like the sea because it is in continuous movement.” She is so eager to see the castle live again that two years ago she allowed Valeria to invade it with a film troupe to shoot scenes for the partly autobiographical film, It’s Easier for a Camel...

“What I filmed here were episodes showing little girls playing in the house,” Valeria explains. “What interested me was the idea that little children could live and play in such a place, it’s a bit like kids living in a museum.”

As the sun starts to set behind the castle, a small crowd gathers at the foot of the steps to the front door, which is guarded by two stone lions. Carla has gone to change for a party marking the launch of the exhibition, and friends, Turin dignitaries and industrialists await her appearance.

Arm-in-arm with Enthoven, she emerges clad in a figure- hugging black dress, a black stole over one shoulder. Her audience applauds, and she picks her way down the steps in stiletto heels as gracefully as if she were sashaying down the catwalk.

The exhibition, La miniatura dal 700 al video d’artista, at the Castello di Castagneto Po near Chivasso, runs until July 10. Call 00 39 011 562 9518

Italian castles