MALAVILLA MUSEUM OF THE FORTRESS HOUSE
"Receive from history and give back to history"
Piercarlo Ferrari Architect
“If we don't rescue it now, we never will,” I said to my mother one day. It was 2009. “There's no time: we have to take Malavilla out of history and give it back to history, as Dad said. Give it back to a community that sees it as part of itself, a monument to the preservation of history, landscape, and identity.”
What is the Malavilla?
The museum tour
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Malavilla is a late medieval building belonging to the fortified house type, which has almost disappeared in our Apennines. Malavilla and Malpasso were names used in old maps to identify 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, made of local stone, with a rectangular plan and a gabled roof in sandstone slabs, is based on the concepts of defense and self-sufficiency. The surprising aspect of Malavilla, despite its ancient origins, is the fact 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, never added later. The ground floor was used as a stable for raising a few animals, sufficient to ensure 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. 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, made of local stone, with a rectangular plan and a gabled roof in sandstone slabs, is based on the concepts of defense and self-sufficiency. The surprising aspect of Malavilla, despite its ancient origins, is the fact 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, never added later. The ground floor was used as a stable for raising a few animals, sufficient to ensure 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.
Ground floor: the stable
As already mentioned, Malavilla is a fortified farm building; therefore, it was built according to two key concepts: defense and self-sufficiency. On the ground floor, the fortified house has a stable to house the animals necessary for the food needs of its inhabitants. It should not be thought that animals such as sheep or cows were permanently locked inside the fortified house: they were taken to pasture to feed and to the nearby Rio Fabiola to drink, but once they returned, they could be sheltered safely, protected by the wooden door locked from the inside with sturdy oak posts. Furthermore, once the internal staircase was retracted to the upper floor, it ensured that even if someone managed to enter the lower level, they would never be able to reach the living quarters. On the ground floor, there are some details of great interest that testify to the clarity of Malavilla's construction design. On the opposite side of the entrance, a slit was created to protect the house and provide a little light to the room. On the sides, there are niches for candles or oil lamps, some of which are made of sandstone slabs forming a sort of mitre arch. Finally, on the right-hand side, a charcoal drawing was found depicting a soldier in profile wearing a Prussian helmet.
First floor: the living space
An external retractable staircase leads to the first floor, the real domestic environment of the fortified house. The trapdoor in the vault, 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 ensured that the animals on the ground floor could be reached to be cared for and fed without having to leave the building, thus avoiding exposure to attacks or danger. The domestic space, or fire room, as it was called by Lucio Gambi, features a three-story sandstone sink on the northeast side, with drains for water to the outside. A window with balconies on the southeast side was used mainly by women to sit and do some work in the daylight. Despite Gambi's apt description, Malavilla shows no traces of a fireplace: this feature, 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.
Second floor: the dovecote
The second floor was used for various purposes: being the driest part of the house, it was used as a sleeping area, but also as a store for grain. Its use as living space is confirmed by the presence of a latrine in the north-west, with a drain on the façade, a very rare feature in this 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 by a farmer: it is a rich building, constructed with selected techniques and materials, which certainly required a client with high economic means. For this reason, it was built in a strategic point in the valley: in direct visual communication with the castle of Castrignano (at that time visible to the northeast) and with the two passages to Val Baganza and Val Parma, it certainly constituted a sort of garrison for the control of the territory. For this purpose, it is likely that there was an external balcony running along the house, accessible from the windows on the first and second floors. This allowed pigeon eggs to be collected and provided access to the sacred shrine on the façade, another element of great historical value. One last detail enriches the second level and the whole of Malavilla: a propitiatory pot, found during the restoration work and hidden in one of the corners of the room. It was walled up during the construction of the building as a good luck charm for the house.
