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
The Malavilla is a building of late medieval origin belonging to the fortified house type, which has almost disappeared in our Apennines. Malavilla, Malpasso were names that identified unsafe places in old maps due to brigandage or other threats.
The fortified house is a building type that precedes the tower house: it is a sort of connecting link between a "rocca" and a sixteenth-century tower house. The construction philosophy of the building, generally three-storeys in local stone, rectangular plan and double-pitched sandstone roof, is based on the concepts of defence and self-sufficiency. The astonishing aspect of the Malavilla, despite its ancient origin, is the fact that it was conceived according to a unitary executive project: each of the building's construction details was created during construction according to a precise and predetermined will and never added later.
The ground floor was used as stable for raising a few animals that could guarantee the life of the people who lived there. The first floor was the actual living space, reachable from the outside via a retractable staircase that guaranteed the defense of the building.
The second floor was used as a bed, but also as a dovecote for breeding pigeons. It was also the place from which to monitor the territory of the Val Fabiola, dominated by the Castrignano Castle, and the two passages to the Val Parma and Val Baganza, crossed by the Via Longobarda, one of the Vie Romee that connected Parma to Rome, through the Apennines.
First floor: the living space
Through an external retractable staircase, you reach the first floor, the real domestic environment of the fortified house. The trapdoor in the vault in the southwest corner also had a removable ladder that, once retracted, guaranteed the defense of the building. As the matter of fact, in the absence of a vertical connection, even breaking down the door on the ground floor, no one would have been able to go up to the next floors. At the same time, the trapdoor guaranteed the possibility of reaching the animals on the ground floor to look after them and to feed themselves, without having to leave the building, thus avoiding exposing oneself to attacks or dangers.
The domestic space or "fire room" as it was called by Lucio Gambi, sees the presence on the northeast side of a three-story sandstone sink with drains for the water to the outside and a window with the "balie" on the southeast side used mainly by women to sit and carry out some work under the daylight. Despite Gambi's happy definition, the Malavilla does not show any traces of a chimney: this element, to which we today attribute a particular antiquity, actually became widespread in rural buildings only from the mid-1700s. Before this period, other types of fireplaces existed, 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 flow outwards.
Second floor: the pigeon house
The second floor was designed and used for different functions: being the driest place in the house it was used as a sleeping space but also as a place to stow grain.
The character of a living space is confirmed by the presence of the latrine located on the northwest side, with a drain in the facade, a very rare element that is difficult to find in other buildings in the area. The second floor, however, was also used for two other very important functions: first, the rearing of pigeons, essential for the self-sufficiency of the building, which could thus rely on meat, eggs and guano (used as fertilizer). Secondly, the defensive function of monitoring the territory, both for its security and, in all probability, 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.
The Malavilla, in fact, is not a building created by the will of the peasant: it is a rich building, built with selected techniques and materials that surely needed a patron with high economic possibilities. It was, also for this reason, built at a strategic point in the valley: in direct visual communication with the Castle of Castrignano, visible in the northeast direction, and with the two passages of the Baganza Valley and to the Parma Valley, it certainly constituted a sort of garrison to control the territory.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)