For five centuries the prince-bishops of Trento ruled from this castle, adding a Renaissance loggia and gardens onto a thirteenth-century fortress as their power grew. Its best-known treasure hides inside the Torre Aquila (Eagle Tower): the Cycle of the Months, commissioned around 1400 by Prince-Bishop Giorgio di Liechtenstein from a still-unidentified Bohemian master.
Eleven surviving frescoed panels (March was lost to fire) show nobles hunting and feasting beside peasants sowing, pruning and threshing through the year, one of the fullest pictures of medieval social life anywhere in Europe. The prince-bishopric ended when Napoleon’s troops arrived in 1796; the castle is now Trentino’s provincial museum, its rooms carrying collections of archaeology and art that span 10,000 years, from prehistoric finds to nineteenth-century pieces.
