THE WINDOWS WITH SEATS
ITA
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On the second floor, as on the first, on the south-west side, there is a window with side seats. These are valuable features, typical of castles and fortresses, tower houses and fortified houses, and not of simple rural buildings, recalling the architectural wealth of Malavilla and the patron who undoubtedly financed its construction.
These seats had a dual function: to allow small tasks to be carried out in natural light, particularly by women who did a great deal of work to run the house and recover any waste that could be converted into a resource.
Secondly, they were used for the defence of the building and for monitoring the territory. Malavilla was certainly part of a system of small fortified buildings that could serve as a garrison for the territory. For this reason, it was possible to exit from the window on the second floor onto a wooden balcony, which was used to collect pigeon eggs, but also as a patrol point and therefore as a means of defence both for the fortified house itself and for the territory over which Castrignano Castle was the dominant feudal building until 1500. It certainly needed to control the two main routes connecting the Val Fabiola to the Val Baganza via the Tino d'Oro, and to the Val Parma via the passage of the current Cozzano pine forest. Military control but also economic control, given the presence of the Via Longobarda, a historic road that connected Parma to the sea in the Middle Ages and was certainly also used in the following centuries.