Castello della Bastardina, Agazzano

Castello della Bastardina in Agazzano, Italy, was built in the late fifteenth century by the Sarmato branch of the Scotti family.

The building rose in a pedemontane setting between the Luretta and Tidone valleys, near the Tidone stream, and took its name from a fortress in Aosta, called La Bastarda, because of similarities in form. The Scotti branch responsible for construction intended the site primarily as a prestigious family residence rather than as a fortress optimized for war.

In 1549 Count Gaspare Scotti sold the property to Gian Maria Anguissola under a nine-year redemption clause; after the estate reverted to Gaspare Scotti it was transferred on 28 January 1558 to Marsilio Cremaschi. The complex suffered heavy damage in 1636 when Spanish troops invaded the Piacenza territory.

The Cremaschi owners sold the castle in 1667 to Rutilio Trissino and his brothers, a family originally from Lodi who had settled in the Piacenza area from 1513. The Trissino buyers pledged to conserve the building and the complex underwent substantial restoration that same year. As part of this change of use, one corner tower was lowered and another was converted to serve as the bell tower for a newly built oratory dedicated to the Holy Cross.

In 1700 the Duke of Parma and Piacenza raised the estate to the rank of a county together with Mirabello and Grintorto in favor of Francesco and Carlo Trissino, with the title to pass to their male heirs. During the early nineteenth century the Trissino counts received the right to hold an annual three-day livestock fair each September, and an Italian-style garden was laid out around the building. That garden was revised in form in 1905 by Luigi Ghezzi.

Ownership passed in the twentieth century to the lawyer Carlo Fabbri, husband of Countess Clelia Trissino, noted as the last descendant of the family. In the late twentieth century the castle and surrounding grounds were converted into a golf club with a nine-hole course; the club entered liquidation and the course closed sometime after 2015.