The castle's fascinating and bustling life begins during the Lombard period, on the road which links the neighbouring Emilia and Liguria regions.
It first belonged to the Malaspina, then to the Commune of Piacenza and, finally, to the Landi family which ruled consecutively for 425 years, forming a small independent principality, the Landi State.
Between the 16th and the 17th centuries Compiano was in its prime, and minted its own currency, opened state schools and started a pawn system.
In the 18th century Compiano passed from the Farnese to the Borbone Family, and was then annexed to the realm of Maria Luigia of Austria, then Duchess of Parma, who used the castle as a State prison for Carbonari captives in 1821.
Before the second world war it was used as a girl's boarding school, but after the war ended, the school was closed down and the castle was bought by Marchioness Lina Raimondi Gambarotta who, after her death in 1987, left it to the Compiano's Municipality.
Built on a rocky spur which dominates the river Taro, the castle is similar to a projection from the surrounding fortified walls, which had been erected to defend the burgh..
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