MUSEUM OF THE FORTIFIED PEASANT HOUSE OR OF THE MALAVILLA FORTIFIED HOUSE
"Take from history,
give back to history"
Piercarlo Ferrari Architect
“If we don't save it now, we won't do it again,” I told my mother one day. It was 2009. “There is no time: we have to take the Malavilla from history and give it back to history, as dad used to say. Return it to a community that sees in it a part of itself, a monument to the preservation of history, landscape, identity.” Located a short walk from the Rocca di Valle di Castrignano complex and visitable with a few minutes' walk through the fields, the Malavilla of Riano is a splendid and intact example of a late medieval house-fort, part of the complex of fortifications placed to guard and defend the Castle of Castrignano and the Via Longobarda, one of the Roman roads that crossed this territory. HISTORY. Malavilla is a building of late medieval origin belonging to the building type of the house-fort, which has almost disappeared in our Apennines. Malavilla, Malpasso were names that identified in old cartographies unsafe places due to banditry or other pitfalls. The house-fortress is a building type that predates the tower-house: it is a kind of link between fortress and sixteenth-century tower-house. The construction philosophy of the building, generally three-storys in local stone, rectangular plan and two-pitch sandstone roof, is hinged on the concepts of defense and self-sufficiency. The amazing aspect of the Malavilla, despite its ancient origin, is the fact that it was conceived according to a unified executive design: each of the building's construction details was carried out during construction according to a precise and predetermined intention and never added to later. The ground floor was used as a stable for raising a few animals that could guarantee the lives of the people who lived there. The first floor constituted the real living space that could be reached from the outside by means of a retractable staircase to ensure the defense of the building. The second floor was used as a bed and also pigeon house for raising pigeons. It was also the environment from which to monitor the territory of the Fabiola Valley, dominated by the Castle of Castrignano, and the two passages to the Parma and Baganza Valleys, crossed by the Via Longobarda, one of the Vie Romee that connected Parma to Rome, across the Apennines.
What is the Malavilla?
The museum tour
Ground floor: the stable
Malavilla is a late medieval building belonging to the fortified house type, which has almost disappeared in our Apennines. Malavilla and Malpasso were names that identified, in old maps, places that were unsafe due to banditry or other dangers.
The fortified house is a type of building that predates the tower house: it is a sort of link between a fortress and a 16th-century tower house. The construction philosophy of the building, generally three stories high in local stone, with a rectangular plan and a gabled sandstone roof, is based on the concepts of defense and self-sufficiency. The amazing thing about Malavilla, despite its ancient origins, is that it was designed according to a unified executive project: each of the building's construction details was created during the construction phase according to a precise and predetermined plan and never added later. The ground floor was used as a stable for raising a few animals that could guarantee the livelihood of the people who lived there. The first floor was the actual living space, accessible from the outside via a retractable staircase that ensured the defense of the building.
The second floor was used as a bedroom, but also as a dovecote for breeding pigeons. It was also the place from which to monitor the Val Fabiola area, dominated by the Castle of Castrignano, and the two passages to Val Parma and Val Baganza, crossed by the Via Longobarda, one of the Via Romee roads that linked Parma to Rome through the Apennines.
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First floor: the living space
A retractable external staircase leads to the first floor, the real domestic environment of the fortified house. The trapdoor in the south-west corner also had a removable staircase which, once retracted, ensured the defense of the building. In fact, in the absence of a vertical connection, even if the door on the ground floor was broken down, no one would have been able to climb to the upper floors. At the same time, the trapdoor made it possible to reach the animals on the ground floor to care for them and feed oneself without having to leave the building, thus avoiding exposure to attacks or dangers.
The domestic space, or ‘fire room’, as Lucio Gambi called it, features a three-tiered sandstone sink with drains to the outside on the north-east side and a window with ‘balie’ (balconies) on the south-east side, used mainly by women to sit and carry out certain tasks in the daylight. Despite Gambi's apt description, Malavilla shows no traces of a fireplace: this element, which we now consider particularly ancient, only became widespread in rural buildings from the mid-1700s onwards. Before this period, there were other types of hearths consisting of holes in the wall (sicconia) or in the roof, through which the smoke produced by the fire lit directly in the room could escape to the outside.
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Second floor: the pigeon house
The second floor was designed and used for various purposes: being the driest part of the house, it was used as a sleeping area but also as a place to store grain. Its use as living space is confirmed by the presence of a latrine on the north-west side, with a drain on the façade, a very rare feature that is difficult to find in other buildings in the area. The second floor was also used for two other very important functions: first of all, pigeon breeding, which was essential for the self-sufficiency of the building, which could thus count on meat, eggs, and guano (used as fertilizer). Secondly, the defensive function of monitoring the territory, both for the security of Malavilla and, in all likelihood, for the control of the territory in favor of the local feudal lord, with whom the owner was certainly in a relationship of economic dependence. Malavilla, in fact, is not a building created at the behest of a farmer: it is a rich building, constructed with techniques and materials that certainly required a client with high-level financial resources. For this reason, it was built in a strategic point in the valley: in direct visual communication with the Castle of Castrignano, visible to the northeast, and with the two passages to Val Baganza and Val Parma, it certainly constituted a sort of garrison for controlling the territory. For this purpose, there was probably a balcony running along the house, accessible from the windows of the fortified house. This allowed pigeon eggs to be collected and provided access to the sacred shrine on the façade, another element of great historical value.
A final detail of great value enriches the top floor and the entire Malavilla: a propitiatory pot found during the restoration, hidden in one of the corners of the room on the second floor. It was walled up during the construction of the building as a good luck charm for the house.
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