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Castellan meetings 2010 San Colombano al Lambro – March 21st, 2010
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What: researches about Middle and Modern Ages fortifications. |
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San Colombano al Lambro (Milan, Italy). |
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Castles, rocche, citadels, town walls and bastions aren’t inactive stones, but evidences of the past on which’s founded today’s reality. Considerable it’s their cultural value: not only for their architectonical persistence, but also when they’re considered their connections with the neighbouring environment, and above all with the people whose existence was bound in different manner to the fortifications. Precisely, Davide Tansini proposed Castellan meetings [Incontri castellani], a series of informal appointments concerning the castled architecture between Lombardy and Emilia. The subject chosen for 2010 was the connections among some types of fortifications: borgo, castle, rocca, town walls and citadel. Title of these meetings was …not to trust’s better! […non fidarsi è meglio!], which summed the problematical cohabitation among the different elements up which every day referred to the fortifications: civilian and military, social and environmental, economical and cultural. Just a topic not much tackled in divulgations about the fortalice architecture’s its influence upon historical developments. In facts, the explanatory works often confine themselves to examine some structure details or to exalt – sometimes ‘reinventing’ – some chronicle episodes; vice versa, they can result technical and sectorial, so not very suitable for non ‘experts’. With Castellans meetings Tansini instead chose a particular approach: well-contextualized and documented discussions, in a strongly interactive relation with the people who took part in. The ‘trace’ of the communicative course was wholly composed by Davide Tansini’s personal studies and researches in historic-architectonic ambit. Simpleness, consistency and clearness were at the base of this communicative formula, which amalgamated a scrupulous historic-scientific method to a colloquial style left marked on cordiality. For 2010’s appointments – from March to October – four localities placed in the central Po Valley were individuated: San Colombano al Lambro (Milan), Piacenza, Rovato (Brescia) and Vigoleno of Vernasca (Piacenza). It was up to San Colombano al Lambro the first appointment (March 21st). The banine fortifications rise on slopes of a hill which dominates the inhabited area, lapped by the Lambro River and placed not much far from the Po. It’s composed by the Rocca placed at the summit of the hill and by the so-called Ricetto, which descends along the northern slope towards the town. Already attested in the XI Century, destroied and then rebuilt by Frederick I Hohenstaufen – the same Frederick Redbeard there found an own palace – the fortifications were then articulated in the rocca/castle couple – the one military, the other residential – in a separation relation which found with wide diffusion in the late Middle Ages. In San Colombano al Lambro such architecture and management model was kept till the Cinquecento, for all the seignories period (Visconti and Sforza in the first place), in a comparison between two different but equally pressing necessities: defending a locality from external menaces and protecting it from those internal. They then continued with Piacenza (June 2nd). In particular, with a definite building chosen among the wide ‘heritage’ of fortified and military architecture owned by the padana capital: the so-called Farnesian Citadel [Cittadella Farnesiana] (or Farnesian Castle [Castello Farnesiano]). Inserted in the South-West side of Piacenza’s walls circuit, it’s a pentagonal bastioned structure, which was required by the duke of Piacenza and Parma Peter Louis Farnese at the half of the XVI Century against incidental coups de main and town riots. So, for the Farnesian Citadel the relation was «against» the local population, evident also in the ancient popular name: «Devil’s Castle» [«Castello del Diavolo»]. Partially demolished from 1848, during the Risorgimento, the Farnesian Citadel was anyway employed for defense purposes till XIX Century’s beginning, and was then included in a military complex still existing. Notwithstanding the undergone transformations, it’s still traceable the original plant of the Citadel, whose surviving parts well give the grandeur and the tactical and strategical conceptions at the base of the project. Besides, it’s significant as comparison with other today disappeared or not longer whole citadels: Asti, Casale Monferrato, Mantua, Messina, Milan, Turin. Rovato was Castellan meetings’s third appointment (September 26th). The small town in the country of Brescia’s placed at the southern end of the Franciacorta, at the foot of the Orfano Mount. It takes origin from an ancient borgo, locally called Castle [Castello] and already documented in the XIII Century. Of this fortified complex – an irregural five-sided stone walls equipped with towers – they remain conspicuous and significant parts, with the traces of the restructurations done during the centuries: important, in particular, that of 1470. Still in the XVI Century the fortalice plant entrusted large part of its own safety possibilities and functions to the local inhabitants, which permitted the effective resistance to well-trained commanders’ armies: Charles d’Anjou in 1265, during the so-called «Vespers of Rovato»; Galeazzo I Visconti in 1326; Francis Sforza in 1448. So close was the partnership with the population – decidedly «pro» – that Rovato’s historic centre’s still now distinguished in very strong manner. Vigoleno of Vernasca concluded the meetings cycle (October 10th). Borgo, Castle and Rocca are here the three constitutive elements of this inhabitated area which rises in the Colli Piacentini, between the valleys of the Arda and Stirone torrents, at the border between the territories of Parma and of Piacenza. In this height Middle Ages defensive complex, resetted up between XIV and XV Century thanks to the Scotti family, the synthesis among the various fortalice components suggests a deep union relation. In facts, the borgo interacts with two other fortified structures – the Castle and the Rocca – in a precise scanning also functional: the borgo for the population, the Castle for the feudatory, the Rocca for the garrison. Also thanks to the reduced sizes of the inhabitated area, to the not much changed environment context and to the very good keeping of the ancient fortifications – among all, the keep with the big ravelin – these last are ‘melted’ in an homogeneous structural whole which well reflects medieval period’s own inhabitation and fortification conception. The title …not to trust’s better!, with the four chosen localities (San Colombano al Lambro, Piacenza, Rovato and Vigoleno), for that reason fixed a particular course – and tread – left marked not much on architectonical characteristics or episodes of historical chronicle, but on a deeper reality, concerning inhabitation ‘tissues’, social evolution, economical conditions, reaching tools of political control. Among historical «continuities» and «discontinuities» an important value of the ancient fortified structures then came out: being a paradigm of the present reality. There’re the political course, with its inevitable consequence of hopes and disappointments; the more eminent personalities of the period; the more felt and debated questions, as taxes – topic always interesting – and their evasion. It’s difficult don’t find in our existence contacts with this only to all appearance far past. |
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Piacenza (Italy). |
Download the release (PDF format) |
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![Vigoleno of Vernasca (Piacenza). Castle [Castello]. Gate. 2008](images/2008-01390.jpg)
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Vigoleno of Vernasca (Piacenza, Italy). |
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Davide Tansini’s contacts:
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