ROCCA DI VALLE DI CASTRIGNANO

It all began in Valle di Castrignano, an ancient village in the Parma hills of Langhirano, consisting of numerous buildings dating back to the medieval period. The heart of the precious settlement, represented by the complex known as ‘La Rocca’, developed from the late Middle Ages as a defensive complex placed to guard the only road linking the castle of Castrignano, a possession once disputed between the powerful Terzi and Rossi families. This branch of the Via Francigena, known at the time as the ‘Via dei Lombardi’ or ‘Via dei monti di Parma’, was travelled by pilgrims coming from Northern Europe, who passed through Parma on their way to Rome, stopping in villages, parish churches and xenodochi along the way. As the centuries went by, the medieval towers were flanked by loggias, porticoes and gardens, and the defensive functions were replaced by those of a residence; it was in these years, between the 18th and 19th centuries, that the Cavatorta family, the ancient owners of the Rocca, carried out the necessary modernisation and expansion of the complex. The ancient defence towers took the pleasant form of a country residence, linked to agricultural activity. One of them, Domenico Cavatorta, a physicist, had himself portrayed by the painter Bisoli in a picture painted in 1836 inside the Parma Academy of Fine Arts of Duchess Maria Luigia of Austria. In 1905, at the Rocca di Valle di Castrignano, Parmigiano-Reggiano was still being cooked by fire. There was a small casello, a typical piece of architecture, for two boilers: two cheeses, at that time, came out of the milk every morning, and who knows how long this ritual had been going on unchanged between the white walls of the village's medieval towers. The Campelli family, owners of the complex since the early 20th century, as well as of four other estates, three in the Parma plain, the Piccionaia, the Serafina and Riva Bianca, and one in the hills, the Fornello, was made up of many brothers and many people then populated the Rocca, all engaged in farming. The towers and the old architecture, built seven centuries ago with white stones quarried with difficulty from the cultivated land, were not just a reminder of a mysterious past, made up of wars, fables and legends, but a place of production in harmony with the surrounding environment, made up of woods, oaks and extensive cultivation. This is how life flowed in the Rocca, once belonging to the Cavatorta family, with its rhythms unchanged for centuries. The people, the granaries, the stables, the houses, the woods, the fields of the Campelli family lived together united by a single purpose: to bring out, every morning, the two wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese from the small casello. The Campelli farm produces and sells Parmigiano-Reggiano. Every day, for over a hundred years.