The castle was built in the 10th century, during the period of the Hungarian raids: the hordes of these barbarians, coming from the steppes of Asia, devastated the Po Valley in 899, fiercely pillaging villages, monasteries, and cities. Emperor Berengar, unable to prevent their bloody devastations, granted the lands on the right side of the Leogra River as a fief to the Bishop of Vicenza (the lands on the left remained with the lay lords); to defend them, the bishop had a whole series of fortifications and castles built on the heights overlooking the Vicenza plain: in Valli, Pieve, Magrè, Malo, Priabona, up to Vicenza and beyond. The castle of Belvicino has been the subject of bloody assaults over the years; it was conquered, lost, and destroyed.
"As a reminder of the end of the 19th century, on Sunday, December 16, 1900, a large wooden Cross was erected on the existing ruins at the summit of the Castle, which was blessed with a special ceremony held up there in the afternoon, with the singing of vespers, hymns by men and maidens, the sound of a band, and gunfire and mortar blasts" (Memories of the life of Pieve by Don Girolamo Bettanin).
"We are now so accustomed to seeing the cross on the Castle, the first wooden one, struck down by lightning in the summer of 1928, which was replaced in 1949 by the current one, that it has become a natural element of the landscape: it almost seems that the hill, with its conical shape, forms its base."
