What happened
Montebello Castle, perched on a hill above the Marecchia valley, belonged to the Malatesta family and, from the 15th century, to the Guidi di Bagno. Its most famous resident is Guendalina, known as Azzurrina. According to legend, she was the daughter of the feudal lord Ugolinuccio and was born an albino, something medieval people associated with dark forces. Her mother dyed her hair black, but the plant-based dye would not hold and the girl's hair took on blue glints – hence her nickname. Her father forbade her to leave the castle and assigned her two guards. On 21 June 1375, the solstice, while a storm raged outside, the girl was playing with a rag ball. The ball rolled down the stairs into the underground ice-house, Azzurrina ran after it, and the guards heard a scream. When they rushed in through the only entrance, they found neither the child nor the ball. It is said that every five years, on the solstice, her voice can be heard in the castle – recordings from those nights are played to visitors at the end of the tour.
Witnesses
The castle's guides and owners; amateur recordings made on solstice nights since the castle opened to visitors.
Explanations and hypotheses
There are no historical sources confirming that Azzurrina existed, and the supposed 17th-century manuscript in which a parish priest allegedly recorded the legend has never been found. The first mentions of her date only from 1989 – the period when the restored castle opened to paying visitors, as Massimo Polidoro among others has pointed out. On 21 June 2010, researchers from the Italian sceptics' association CICAP recorded the solstice night with professional equipment and captured no unusual sounds.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.