Castello di Montebello (Azzurrina)

The Rocca di Montebello crowns a 436-metre hill in the Romagna hinterland, looking over the Marecchia and Uso valleys about 20 kilometres from the beaches of Rimini. It is first mentioned in a notary’s deed of 1186, when it was sold to a member of the Malatesta family, the lords of Rimini, who strengthened it with walls and towers. In 1464 Pope Pius II made Giovanni Francesco Guidi di Bagno count of Montebello as a reward for helping to defeat Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, and the Guidi di Bagno family owns the castle to this day.

The ghost story, as told on the guided tours, concerns Guendalina Malatesta, a little girl said to have been born around 1370 to the lord of Montebello. She was albino, the story goes, and because pale hair was linked with witchcraft her mother dyed it dark – but the plant dye would not take, leaving bluish glints that earned her the nickname Azzurrina, “little blue one”. Kept indoors under the watch of two guards, she was playing with a rag ball during a thunderstorm on 21 June 1375, the summer solstice, when the ball bounced down the steps to the castle’s ice-house. The guards heard a scream and ran down, but found neither the child nor the ball.

There is no historical evidence that Azzurrina ever existed. Supporters say the tale survived by word of mouth until a local priest wrote it down around 1620, but that manuscript has never been found or seen. The Italian skeptic Massimo Polidoro and others have noted that the first known mentions of Azzurrina date from 1989 – the year the castle, newly restored, opened to paying visitors. Older local writing does record a vaguer tradition of spirits in the castle: in the early 20th century the historian Tommaso Molari wrote of strange noises and thuds rising from its trapdoors at night.

The legend has since become a regional phenomenon. Tour guides play visitors recordings said to capture a child’s voice or crying, made during the solstice every five years, when Azzurrina supposedly makes herself heard. In 2010 researchers from CICAP, Italy’s skeptics’ committee, recorded on the solstice with professional equipment and controls and captured nothing unusual. A feature film, Azzurrina, followed in 2023.

The signature phenomenon is sound: a child’s voice, sobbing or laughter, and the patter of a bouncing ball, said to be heard especially on 21 June in years ending in 0 or 5. Visitors also describe cold air and a sense of presence in the stairway to the ice-house and in the castle corridors.

The ice-house (ghiacciaia) beneath the castle and the narrow staircase leading down to it, where the girl is said to have disappeared, are the heart of the story; night tours concentrate there.

Azzurrina is one of Italy’s best-known ghost stories, retold in local books, TV features, the 2023 film Azzurrina and a song by the symphonic metal band Evenoire. Night visits and solstice events at Montebello draw visitors from across the country.