QR9 THE PROPITIATORY OLLA
During the reconstruction of the wooden floor that divides the first floor from the second, it was necessary to make a recess for the addition of a joist to support the planking. This was due to the fact that the house had tilted over time and therefore it was not possible to use both the original recesses of the planking itself. This circumstance did, however, allow for the unearthing of a small niche with a stone vault in the corner of the south-west and north-west sides located precisely at the point where the joist enters the wall.
At the base of the niche there is a vase, a domestic ceramic olla, walled up and hidden during the building's construction phase, proving the lucid planning with which the Malavilla was built (to refute the extemporaneousness and empiricism to which rural architecture is always relegated).
It most probably contained coins as an offering or a parchment with a propitiatory sentence against earthquakes or any other adversity that might have endangered the life of the building. A sort of tribute well-wishing for the fate of the house by the very pagan culture that had conceived it.
Other 16th-century graffito ceramics were found during the restoration and displayed on the second floor: one of them bears the coat-of-arms of the heart with the saw of the Bentivoglio, an important feudal family of Bologna in the 14th century.