The construction of the Saluzzo Castle, commissioned by Marquess Tommaso I, can be dated between 1270 and 1286 based on previous fortifications. In fact, the name Castiglia would derive from the Latin plural castella ("the castles"). Originally, the Castiglia appeared as a quadrangular fortress, surrounded by a curtain wall with four cylindrical towers.

The Museum of Chivalrous Civilization, located on the third floor of the Castiglia, is an "educational museum" characterized by multimedia installations and reproductions of documents and works, allowing visitors to discover the most important aspects or moments of chivalrous and courtly society of the Marquisate, presenting one or more key figures, with the aim of inviting the visitor to search for the testimonies evoked here in the territory.

The Museum of Carceral Memory retraces these events considering them an important episode in the story of an institution that has marked the formation of modern Western democracies: the disciplinary prison. Emotionally impactful setups, supported by documentation of impeccable scientific rigor (and the exhibition of small objects found in the cells of the Castiglia when, in 1992, it was dismantled as a penitentiary institution), characterize an original and evocative museum path inserted in the ancient isolation cells on the basement floor of the building.