QR2 THE NICHES
In many buildings in the area there are niches carved into the masonry with a trilithic system. They have different shapes for the same function: to contain candles for lighting the rooms. In the peasant house, in fact, the furniture was few and essential: the chest, the cupboard ("al tavler"), the bed, the wardrobe, the corner cupboard, the wood box ("al casòn 'dla lèggna"), the straw chairs ("scrana") and little else. None were suitable for holding lighting with a naked flame. Furthermore, the niches managed to create that little bit of light diffusion and slightly amplify the illumination. It is not excluded that they were also used to store objects.
The niches with an architrave composed of two planes inclined at 45° are decidedly rarer: it has not been possible to understand whether this responded to a specific function or just to an aesthetic research or whether they were made in this way only because in this way it was not necessary to have particularly generously sized planes available, in a territory, we remember, with a prevalence of limestone and almost devoid of outcrops of cut sandstone present in other areas of the Apennines such as Carniglia or Rusino.
A final suggestion: perhaps their shape, which recalls the Malavilla façade, was instead an aesthetic research or a spontaneous manifestation of forms inherent in the local culture?