Built at the top of a rocky spur, it is located in a strategically important place, both because it is easily defendable and because it allows the control of the roads between the Oltregiogo and the plain of Alessandria, in an area of ​​great contrasts between Monferrato and Liguria.

Initially made up of a polygonal structure intended for surveillance troops, the castle, initially included in the fiefdom of the Marquis of Monferrato, subsequently passed to the Marquis of Gavi. In 1431 the territory was occupied militarily by Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan; it still has an exclusively defensive function and was assigned to Gian Galeazzo Trotti, captain of fortune, who began the transformation of the building into a noble residence. In 1570, the fiefdom was purchased by Battista Grimaldi, a Genoese patrician, whose family retained the property for around 250 years, completing its construction at the end of the eighteenth century with the majestic western façade and the creation of the spectacular Italian garden.

The oldest part of the castle, dating back to the end of the 1200s, is the circular tower: which currently reaches 22 metres in height, however before 1865, when it was partially demolished by lightning, it was almost two meters taller and ended with a crowning battlement with Ghibelline-type elements (swallowtail). Very singular is the terminal decoration consisting of a triple series of hanging arches in brick and stone which recall the Genoese towers of the Embriaci and the Grimaldina. On the ground floor, a door leads to a room with gray stone and brick walls used as a warehouse and probably as a water tank. The second room is the one called the “pitfall”, currently inaccessible, which tradition has it was a trap into which make enemies fall. The third room has a herringbone floor and there is some graffiti. In the fourth room there are seventeenth-century frescoes, perhaps depicting the Parish Church. Then there are rooms that were used as prisons and as accommodation for the garrison.

The sixteenth-century block of the castle consists of a complex of three buildings, covered in plaster, with a stone string course frame corresponding to the main floor and the seven dormer windows. The atrium consists of a loggia with cross vaults, supported by robust exposed masonry pillars, vestiges of the primitive medieval structure.

The original Romanesque façade, broken in the upper part, is still visible in Via della Canonica. It was built in exposed grey freestone with two series of three blind arches. The portal, now used as a secondary entrance, has a round lunette. Inside the church there are paintings of great importance, including a canvas by Giovanni Battista Merano depicting the presentation of the head of the Baptist to Herodias.

In the centre of the apse there is a canvas, in an eighteenth-century frame, depicting Saint James on horseback, conqueror of the Moors. The left side chapel, dedicated to San Giacomo Maggiore, preserves the life-size polychrome wooden processionary chest containing two authenticated relics. In the sacristy there is a finely crafted seventeenth-century Genoese canvas depicting the deposition of Christ as well as an eighteenth-century Madonna and angels. In the fourth bay on the left there is a seventeenth-century Herod’s Boarding School and on an ancient wooden door St. Peter with the keys is depicted, which is of particular beauty.

A wide staircase leads to the mystical and venerated destination of the Ligurian-Piedmontese muleteers and horsemen: the ancient church of the Assunta and San Libero, commonly called the Church of Santa Limbania, now a national monument. The Church of Colle di Castelvero appears as early as 1374 in a drawing. The building, renovated in the late sixteenth century, currently has a gabled façade divided into three parts by two superimposed orders of Doric pilasters. In the centre of the lower part there was a fresco from 1642 depicting the Madonna Assunta, commissioned by the Marquise Gerolama Serra Grimaldi from the Genoese workshop of Giovanni Battista Carlone. The stone portal bears the date 1690 at the top. The plan has a single nave, ending with an apse.

The low apse basin is decorated with a fresco dedicated to the Triumph of the Assumption, completed in 1526 by Luchino Ferrari. Contemporary frescoes are also found in the side altars; the one on the right houses the statue of Saint Limbania.

She was an oriental girl who, to escape the marriage imposed by her family, boarded a Genoese ship. She was entrusted to the Benedictine monastery of San Tommaso and became a nun. The port railway station and a grain silo were dedicated to it. In Rocca his cult was encouraged by the Grimaldi family who sponsored the restoration and embellishment of the church. In Voltri there is a church dedicated to the Saint, dating back to the 13th century. The horsemen and muleteers coming from the Port of Genoa arrived in Voltri, went up the Canellona road, stopped at the Cappelletta di Masone, went down to Valle Stura and went up from Rossiglione to Costa di Ovada and then to Rocca Grimalda. This is the reason for the veneration of this saint by the Ligurian-Piedmontese muleteers and horses. The church, therefore, became a destination for pilgrimages from all over the Ligurian Oltregiogo.

The Mask Museum was founded in 2000, on the initiative of a group of scholars belonging to the Ethno-Anthropological Laboratory active in the area since 1996. The Laboratory and the Mask Museum have managed to carry out an ambitious project in Rocca Grimalda: to make a small Borgo dell’Oltregiogo, a cultural development centre capable of communicating with Italian and European institutions involved in the study of popular customs. Its institution is mainly due to the presence in Rocca Grimalda of a carnival ritual with very archaic features, the Lachera, whose costumes show clear similarities with those used in similar rites still practiced in many parts of Europe. A permanent collection has been created which deals with the theme of carnival, holidays and masquerade. From the intertwining of the oral sources of the community of Rocca Grimalda and the photographic documentation it was possible to reconstruct the roles of the masks and the dynamics of the festival. The oldest evidence of the Lachera found so far consists of a small and faded photograph dating back to 1912. The photographs from subsequent years show a masked group made up of about fifteen figures (Groom, Bride, a bridesmaid, two Zouaves, two Lchè, four Trapulin, four Muleteers, the Baby, a mysterious Warrior and the addition of the musical accompaniment of two or three musicians (violin, clarinet, guitar or mandolin). The morphology of the mask remains almost unchanged as can be seen in the images of the shows of 1914, 1925 and 1929. The Museum is located to the back of the sixteenth-century Town Hall.

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