del Vasto

The del Vasto were the principal branch of the Aleramici, the Frankish dynasty installed in Piedmont and western Liguria by tenth-century Ottonian grants, taking their name from devastated borderlands in the region.

Their defining figure was Boniface del Vasto, margrave of Savona from 1084, whose sons spread across northern Italy: Manfred I founded the marquisate of Saluzzo, Anselm began the margraves of Ceva and Henry's line became the del Carretto. Boniface also raised his niece Adelaide del Vasto, who married first Roger I of Sicily and then King Baldwin I of Jerusalem, tying the house to the Norman kingdoms of the Mediterranean.

The Saluzzo line, the most enduring, ruled its Alpine marquisate for five centuries. Overshadowed by the rising House of Savoy, it peaked under the mediator Ludovico I in the fifteenth century, and under Ludovico II opened the Buco di Viso, the first Alpine road tunnel, before dynastic quarrels drew in France, which deposed the last marquis Gabriele and annexed Saluzzo in 1548.