The Castello Mirabello is a central feature of the Battle of Pavia, with most of the battle taking place around the building. I therefore decided that making Mirabello for Pavia was important and that using a generic building would not give me the look I wanted. Unfortunately no manufacturer currently makes a model suitable for Mirabello, which left scratch building as the only option. This post details how I constructed Mirabello.
Reference photos.
The buildings at Mirabello consist of a main building, outhouses, walls, a gate and a moat. Unfortunately only the main building exists today. A photo of this building was the main source material.
This photo set the main layout of the building. However, it looks like stucco was originally on the building as shown in the attached drawing.
This drawing also shows the outbuildings which I still need to construct. In addition to this drawing, many of the art pieces of the period also show an observatory. Probably the most famous is the Pavia Tapestry image.
The tapestry also set the color palette for the building.
Making Mirabello for Pavia.
I decided to construct the main building using foam as the base structure. The doors and window frames were purchased from “Things from the Basement“. They also cut me a piece for the balcony frontage. These were all custom parts. I would recommend this company for all mdf laser cut parts.
I contacted a local 3D printer to make the pantile roof. One recommendation is to buy the roof first and then make the building to fit it. I have found that 3D pantile roofs are a very easy option rather than try to make pantile roofs from scratch.
The balcony was a combination of a laser cut part backed by foam.
The building after the windows, doors and roof are added is shown below. This photo shows a temporary assembly to test the fit of the parts.
The next stage was to texture the building, the first thing that I did was to fix some brick paper in several locations. These would show through spaces where I left off the texture.
The next stage was to use spackling to texture the surface. This texture was added by hand, allowed to dry and then sanded down.
The building was then painted and weathered. As a base coat I used Vallejo German Camo Beige. I then dry brushed with Vallejo White Grey. Finally I used a Vallejo powder of European Earth. This last powder was applied sparingly, but it rally brings the building to life. Lastly, on the south wall I used a dark green wash sparingly in places to add algae to the walls.
Building the observatory.
The observatory was built using two different 3D printed buildings purchased from Etsy. The first was entitled Minature Arcane Dome. It is a very sci-fi type dome and I had to sand off many of the rivets from the roof. However, it provided a great top of the observatory tower. Below is a picture of the building after sanding and priming.
The base of the structure was another 3D building from Etsy entitled Harbour Watch Tower. This was a turreted tower. I removed the top of the turret and used the rest as a base. To join the buildings I needed a sloped surface as shown in the Pavia Tapestry. I constructed this slope from foam and finished the surface with spackling.
The finishing of the making of Mirabello for Pavia
The following two photos show the finished buildings. I still need to do the outbuildings, gate and moat. The overall building length is about 13″.
The making Mirabello for Pavia was really my first attempt at scratch building structures. I think that it turned out quite well. It is a little larger than most commercially available buildings, but will form a good centre piece for the battle of Pavia.