Farmhouse Località La Scola, Grizzana Morandi

THE VILLAGE SCOLA DI VIMIGNANO
It is one of the best preserved medieval villages in the province of Bologna, with an architectural homogeneity which is expressed in the civil buildings, tower houses and oratories and which also preserves a centuries-old cypress tree registered in the register of
monumental trees of Italy.
The name seems to derive from the Lombard Sculca which indicated an armed guard post
(6th - 8th century), the village in fact had considerable military
and strategic importance at that time, being part of a fortified line that protected the Exarchate of Ravenna (Eastern Roman Empire) from the expansionist thrusts of the Lombards (settled in Tuscany) and constituted the border. The existing buildings date back to the transition between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when a favorable economic situation brought about a strong boost to building growth thanks to the professionalism of the workers from Lombardy: the Comacini masters. Borgo la Scola was built almost entirely by Comacine masters, whose constructions have defied time. They used particular construction techniques and marked the buildings they built with their symbols, for example, with the Celtic rose and symbols of abundance. The tower house of Cadoré, not far from the Scola, preserves a fireplace with some symbols from they used in their works: the compass, the plumb line, the mallet.
THE PARISI FAMILY AND THE HOUSE
The Parisi family was the dominant family of the Scola village and was the owner
of the entire village until the mid-18th century .
Perhaps of French origin or due to trade with France, as the name denotes,
he settled in Scola, coming from Tuscany, during the 14th century. It was mentioned for the first time in a document, in the Estimates of 1385. Active in the notary profession and in trade, it gave great impetus to the economic and social life of the village, becoming one of the most important families in the Limentra valley (the river which flows between Tuscany and Emilia). It became a large landowner and allied itself and intermarried with the most famous families of the mountain and had among its members numerous notaries, doctors of law, five Captains of the mountain and around thirty ecclesiastics, including some high prelates. It appears from documents cited by the historian Arturo Palmieri that the Parisi della Scola attacked the residence of the Vicar (governor) of Castel di Casio on 15 December 1469 and were therefore registered in the Acta Criminalia, but there is no conviction. The historian hypothesizes that the Parisi defended themselves by invoking the previous right of possession of the occupied lands that had been taken by the Municipality of Bologna. In the struggles between the Church and the Empire the family was always partisans of the Pope and in particular of Julius II della Rovere in his fight against the Lordship of Bologna. During the seventeenth century Don Angelo Parisi climbed the ecclesiastical hierarchy, becoming bishop and rebuilt the family chapel in 1616, an oratory dedicated to St. Peter which is located almost in front of the loggia on the first floor. Inside there is an altarpiece which depicts the Madonna of the Belt and to the left of the Madonna the donor Angelo Parisi. The oratory was then donated to the Diocese of Bologna in the first half of the twentieth century. The Parisi Tower House –Montanelli was built during the 16th century (previously the family lived in the Meridiana house in the same square) according to the custom of the time, in a style that no longer existed: that of feudal fortified castles. Castles which had long since disappeared because in the battles between the Municipality of Bologna and the feudal lords of the mountains the latter had been definitively defeated and their castles almost all destroyed and the feudal lords forced to live in the city. The wealthiest families in the mountains therefore built fortified tower-houses, to increase their own prestige but also to be able to repel the attacks of gangs of outlaws often commanded by members of the old feudal families. It should be noted that this is one of the very few tower houses surviving in its original structure, with most of the original furnishings, and in a good state of conservation. This was possible because the house remained in the hands of the Parisi-Montanelli family until the present day: since the death of the last Parisi, Irene (1852-1933), the only daughter of Enea Parisi (1818-1910), the house has was used by the daughter's family for the summer period, then by the grandchildren (including my father Cesare Montanelli, who did his utmost to avoid the distortion of the village and to whom we owe a large part of its original conservation) and by the great-grandchildren until almost 2000. Irene
Parisi was sent to study as a girl at a boarding school for girls in Florence, a boarding school frequented by the Florentine aristocracy and upper middle class, which denotes the social status of the family still in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It was Irene who requested from the Ministry of Education in 1915 that the house be declared of "important interest" and therefore protected by the laws of the time. Irene's husband, the doctor Cesare Calzolari, significantly increased the land properties of his wife and purchased a three-storey house in Bologna for his daughter Cesarina who had married Ugo Renato Montanelli, coming from Tuscany and who intended to settle in Bologna. The marriage was initially opposed by her family due to his humble origins. They had four daughters and a son, Cesare
of whom my sister and I are the daughters.
EXTERIOR
The house therefore presents itself as a noble residence from the Renaissance period but with a revival of medieval elements: the tower, first place, which largely retains its original appearance and a secret room on the top floor with access from a trap door camouflaged in the ceiling of the hall, the main entrance door, rebuilt in 1638 as the date on the architrave shows , which has two slits on the sides at different heights to observe who came to the door and possibly use the blunderbuss. These loopholes took the name "traitor" for a reason. A few steps lead up to the door, which is studded, oak and original. The metal door bears the symbol of the Celtic rose: the flower with six petals inscribed in a circle. In the lower part it shows some traces of an attempted fire apparently due to a peasant revolt during the Red Week of 1914. On the The architrave of the door is the inscription OSTIUM NON HOSTIUM, that is, the door is not open to enemies (but only to friends). The façade on the main square of the village presents Renaissance motifs of Florentine origin: the projecting eaves, the symmetrical windows , proportioned and elaborate,
the use of worked pietra serena (Montovolo sandstone) for the contours of the door and
windows. At the top of the tower there is a sixteenth-century frieze painted with palmettes and six-petalled flowers inscribed in a circle, the Celtic Rose (a typical symbol of northern Italy perhaps dating back to the solar cult). The central body of the building was then other parts were added, with suspended connections to nearby buildings, an architraved loggia, a covered terrace. The house is built on a slope, so the main floor at street level on the square on the south-east side is located on the third floor .
NOBLE FLOOR - INTERIOR
I report some words of the historian Arturo Palmieri in his book “The Bolognese mountains in the Middle Ages” 1929:
“Certain leading families of the 1400s and 1500s had sumptuous homes built
copying the figures of the old castles, which the memory was preserved. The tenement buildings of the Scola are buildings with a feudal appearance and the interior of the old destroyed castles must have been of the type of these buildings. A large and robust door closed the entrance and the first room was a vestibule onto which they opened. three doors: the one on the left led to the vast kitchen, the other on the right to the storage area and, in front, to the high, square room with the oak and chestnut wood ceiling. One wall was almost entirely covered by the large fireplace that warmed the winter vigils; at the ends of the other sides as many doors led to the bedrooms or to various services: armory and warehouses. The basement opened up below.”
This is in fact how the house is structured inside. Once you enter the entrance, passing a few steps, you find three rooms. On the right, a room with an original stone sink where dishes were washed and some food was prepared, with a window overlooking the square and a small oval window next to the sink. On the left, the very bright kitchen itself with two wall pantries and a beautiful sandstone fireplace for cooking, with high reliefs of the symbols of the mountain and of abundance: the chestnut leaf, the ear of corn, the thistle. The room had been used for some time, however as a bedroom. From here a small service door leads to the hall, which can also be accessed from the entrance. The hall is quite large: it has a height of almost 5 metres. It has two windows, oriented to the east, which overlook the countryside in the direction del Sasso di
Vigo both with stone seats (or balconies). Between the windows is a large stone fireplace with the inscription FRANCISCUS QUONDAM LAURENTII / DE
PARISIIS HOC CAMINUM FACIENDUM CURAVIT ANNO DOMINI MDLXXV /
XXVII MENSIS AUGUSTI. “Francesco of the late Lorenzo Parisi had this fireplace made in the year of the Lord 1575 on the 28th of August”.
High up along the perimeter of the room there is a very deteriorated fresco of the
Labours of Hercules.
On the right wall looking at the fireplace there is a fresco of the Madonna with child, in good quality and dating back to the 17th century from the Bolognese school. On the opposite wall there is a Saint Francis from the same period. The decorations on the walls are in pink, mauve and beige they are of eighteenth-century origin, refreshed in the twentieth century. On the ceiling of the room there is a trap door which gives access to the so-called secret chamber of the tower, the equivalent of a modern panic room. On the two remaining walls there are four original doors. seventeenth-century. Three lead to as many bedrooms, one of which is located inside the tower. In another room there is a small bathroom with toilet and sink in poor condition, with a small window. The third room was originally the pantry where food was stored and was accessed directly from the sink room with a small wooden door which was closed on the side of the room but still exists on the opposite side. The fourth door leads to a suspended passage that leads to a fourth room with
a window and a door leading to a covered terrace.
Below the terrace there is a room with a window and access only from the street,
used as a warehouse.
In in a room before the suspended passage there is a bathroom from the 1960s, with toilet, sink, bidet and small bathtub. The room has a medium-sized window.
All the floors are in Florentine terracotta, the thresholds in sandstone.
LOGGIA APARTMENT - FIRST FLOOR
Above the main floor and connected to it by a wooden spiral staircase which leads, through a trap door camouflaged in the floor, to the sink room, is the so-called loggia apartment. The actual entrance is under the vault at the exit of the square and you enter via a stone staircase that leads to the large and bright loggia and to the door that opens onto a room with a stone sink and fireplace with two windows overlooking the square. Also from the loggia another smaller door, original from the seventeenth century with the original lock preserved, also leads to the apartment. From the first room you enter a large and bright room with a window overlooking the square and a small arched window towards the east. On the other side of the entrance hall you reach a smaller passage room with a dining table that leads to the kitchenette which is a passage and to the bathroom (renovated a few years ago with toilet, shower, sink) and then, through a door engraved with the date 1606, to two other quite large rooms, one of which is located in the tower and whose window looks towards the east while the other room has a window towards the west. CELLARS, OVEN, WAREHOUSES AND WOODWORKSHEETS Via the spiral staircase (the same one used to go up to the loggia apartment) from the main floor you go down to the cellars in the basement, two medium-sized ones, from here through a door you reach the oven room of the house where bread was baked. This room can also be accessed from the street and from here there is a long stone staircase that connects the two basement floors to the ground floor of the garden. Starting from the oven, on the first lower floor on the right and left are two large illuminated warehouses from windows. On the second lower floor there are three rooms used as woodsheds; two of them are accessed with an independent entrance from the staircase directly from the garden. The floors are all made of wood and it is interesting to note the structure of the floors of the central room of each floor, which features reverse trusses supported by a central pillar , according to the ancient style of the buildings of the Bolognese mountains.
WAREHOUSE CASA DELLA MERIDIANA
Outside the house, with entrance onto the square, on the ground floor of the house of the
Meridiana, after a period wooden door, there are two large rooms quite
high (275 cm) used in the past as a wine cellar. The floor is in grit.
THE PARK
Along the south-east side of the house extends a large garden (14,000 square metres)
where there are some fruit trees and tall trees (horse chestnuts), land
currently partly abandoned . The garden (in a small part terraced with stone walls) can be accessed from inside the house through the staircase that leads to the warehouses and from the outside (through a wooden gate and a stone staircase and also from the municipal road downhill starting from the square).
“ALBERTINA” APARTMENT AND GRANARY STREET LEVEL
(property Maria Teresa Niutta)
Leaving the house and passing under the vault and then on the left under the suspended passage, you reach the door that leads to an entrance: on the left you enter a well-lit large warehouse with original wooden ceiling and terracotta floor and on the right you enter a small two-room apartment (one of which is in the tower) without a bathroom (in the past with external services) .--9a2131f6964c75b20f206cac45e934c5!