Ottone del Carretto (died 1237×42), a patron of troubadours and an imperialist, was the margrave of Savona (c.1185–91) and podestà of the Republic of Genoa (1194–95) and of Asti (1212).
[1] The same year (1181), Ottone, still a minor, witnessed the treaty between Manfred II of Saluzzo, his relative, and the commune of Alba.
[1] The cities of Savona and Noli were now largely independent of seignorial authority, and in the former the family's power was wielded most effectively by the bishop, Ambrogio, another younger brother of Ottone.
[1] On 10 April 1191 Ottone sold to the commune of Savona all his banal rights and patrimony in the city's territory—except the castellanies of Quiliano and Albisola, the latter being a fief of William V of Montferrat—for 1,500 lire of Genoa.
[1] On 22 November 1192, he completed the process begun the previous year and sold Quiliano and his rights in Albisola to Savona for 5,000 Genoese lire.
[1] The next year (1193), Ottone's wife, Alda, a daughter of the Crusader lord Hugh III of Giblet of the Embriaco family, appears in the record for the first time when she ratified the sale of Quiliano and Albisola.
[1] From the sale of his rights in Savona and his control of the trade route from the city to the mountains, Ottone gained enormous wealth.
He turned his court into a centre of culture, capable of competing with that of the margraves of Montferrat, and he patronised Occitan poets.
[1] In 1194 Ottone joined Boniface I of Montferrat and the Republic of Genoa in aiding Henry VI in his conquest of Sicily, which he claimed in right of his wife, Constance.
[1] Ottone, in accordance with his oath of 1182, was staying in Genoa when the podestà, Oberto di Olevano, died of a fever.
Henry VI had promised Genoa as a reward for its services Syracuse and the Val di Noto in Sicily, but he used the illegality of Ottone's election as an excuse to not hand over the territories.
[1] In 1199 he stood as a witness to the treaty of peace signed at San Germano in the Casalese between Boniface and the communes of Asti, Alessandria and Vercelli.
[1] The chief purpose of Ottone's friendship to the citie of Asti and Genoa was to keep the trade route that passed through his territory open and to maintain a good link with the powerful margraves of Montferrat.
In 1217 Ottone secured the passage of Asti's goods to Savona, and in 1218 he swore an oath to the latter city that he would own a house there and recruit men for service in the commune.
When Frederick II came to Italy in 1227, the communes of the Po Valley rose in revolt against Genoa, hoping for imperial assistance.
[1] That same year he stood as guarantor to Boniface II of Montferrat for the alliance of Genoa and Asti in an effort to prevent Alessandrian expansion.
In November 1233 he renounced his rights at Cortemiglia to fodder and to the goods of those who died intestate (ab intestato) in exchange for an annual rent.
[1] About 1234 the Emperor Frederick II granted an imperial vicariate to Ottone, although the exact nature of this appointment is unknown.
Ottone, acting as vicar, did grant to a certain Guglielmo Piloso di Santa Vittoria the right to impose a toll on the road that passed through his domains.
[1] Finally, that year the Hospitaller priory of Lombardy claimed the tithes of Rocchetta in Ottone's domain belonged to them.