QR1 THE SLIT
Several times in the course of the visit it will be mentioned how the Malavilla belongs to the building type of the house-fort and that is, of a fortified peasant house.
In this logic the ground floor was the weak point of the building and therefore could not be provided with large openings that could expose it to eventual dangers of intrusion. In fact, the house was protected by the “armored” entrance portal and its locking system with posts embedded in the masonry. Thus, on the northeast side is a small rectangular opening, very narrow and high, the slit. It could be used as a hole from which to fire arquebuses, bows, and crossbows, but its dimensions were designed to be themselves a guarantee of anti-intrusion given the very small dimensions that did not even require the need for the addition of gratings. The interior of the embrasure is particularly interesting from a constructional point of view: note the detail of the chute structure composed of sandstone flakes to form a kind of staircase that we still see today but which would actually have been plastered to form a uniform and smooth inward chute to facilitate the operations of defense and use of weapons, but also to widen, albeit slightly, the spread of light.