Rocchetta Mattei

About

Rocchetta Mattei is an eclectic 19th-century castle located near the village of Riola, Emilia-Romagna, in the municipality of Grizzana Morandi, northern Italy. Standing on a rocky spur above the Reno valley, close to the confluence of the Reno and Limentra rivers, it was begun in 1850 by Count Cesare Mattei (1809–1896) on the ruins of the medieval Rocca di Savignano, a fortress documented in a strategically important area linked to trans-Apennine routes, monastic possessions and later Bolognese territorial control. Conceived as both a neo-medieval residence and the headquarters of Mattei's alternative medical system of electrohomeopathy, Rocchetta Mattei combines neo-medieval, Moorish revival and Liberty elements in a deliberately labyrinthine layout. Italian heritage authorities regard it as one of the most significant examples of 19th-century eclectic architecture in Italy. Since 2005 the complex has been owned by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna (Fondazione Carisbo), which carried out an extensive restoration programme. It reopened to the public in 2015 as a museum and cultural venue and has become one of the most visited heritage sites in the Emilia-Romagna Apennines...

Rocchetta Mattei was built on the rocky spur formerly occupied by the medieval Rocca di Savignano, a fortified site overlooking the confluence of the Reno and the eastern Limentra, at about 400 metres above sea level. The site lay close to the historical border between the Bolognese and Pistoiese territories, in an area of strategic importance for trans-Apennine communications between central Italy and the Po plain.

The importance of Savignano was linked not to a single fixed road, but to a wider network of bridges, routes and territorial jurisdictions. According to the historian Renzo Zagnoni, two major medieval trans-Apennine routes converged in this area. One followed the Reno and western Limentra valleys and is identified in Pistoiese sources as the strata de Sambuca, later associated with the Via Francesca della Sambuca. The other followed the eastern Limentra valley and is identified as the strata de Fonte Taonis, connected with the monastic and ridge system of Fontana Taona. In Bolognese statutes of the mid-13th century these routes corresponded broadly to the roads towards Pavana and Stagno. Savignano therefore stood near a point where roads, bridges, monastic possessions and political jurisdictions met.

Regional heritage records place Savignano within an early medieval frontier zone. The line Montovolo–Savignano–Montecavalloro formed one of the northernmost areas of Lombard expansion from the south, while a Byzantine defensive line ran on the opposite side of the Reno, linked to the defence of Bologna and Ravenna. By the 12th century the corte of Savignano, protected by a castle and associated with a mill and a bridge over the Limentra, belonged in part to the Benedictine abbey of San Salvatore della Fontana Taona, whose possessions extended from the Pistoiese mountains northwards along the Reno valley.

In 1235 Savignano is recorded as having a fortress with a tower, connected by a passageway to a walled enclosure protecting several houses. At that time the site was under the influence of the Alberti counts, who controlled a network of castles between the Limentra and the Brasimone. During the 13th century, as the abbey of Fontana Taona declined, the commune of Bologna strengthened its control over the Reno valley. In 1293 Bologna captured the castle of Savignano and destroyed it almost completely, before rebuilding walls and structures suitable for a garrison. In the following centuries the growing importance of valley-floor centres such as Vergato and Porretta made the older Apennine fortifications increasingly obsolete, and by the late 18th century the Rocca di Savignano had been reduced to a ruin.

Cesare Mattei and the origin of the castle

Cesare Mattei was born in Bologna in 1809 into a wealthy bourgeois family of Ferrarese origin and moved in intellectual and political circles that included figures such as the writer Paolo Costa, the politician Marco Minghetti and the composer Gioachino Rossini. He was among the founders of the savings bank Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna in 1837. In 1847 he and his brother Giuseppe were created counts by Pope Pius IX after donating their possessions on the Magnavacca canal, near Comacchio, to the Papal States, an act regarded as strategically useful against Austrian positions in the area.

The death of his mother and his disillusionment with politics after 1848 led Mattei to withdraw from public life and devote himself to the study of a new therapeutic system which he called elettromiopatia or elettromeopatia. In 1850 he acquired the land on which the ruins of the Rocca di Savignano still stood and, on 5 November of that year, laid the first stone of what he affectionately called the Rocchetta (“little fortress”). According to the Archivio Museo Cesare Mattei, the choice of the Savignano site may also have been connected with Mattei's family network: his brother Giuseppe had married Carolina Brunetti, whose family owned land in the area.

Mattei personally directed the works, initially with the ambition of recreating a medieval castle. He settled permanently at Rocchetta Mattei in 1859, adopting the lifestyle of a “medieval lord” with a small court of collaborators and patients, and continued to modify and enlarge the complex throughout his life. Treccani states that the main phase of the building was completed only in 1875, while later additions and decorative changes continued under Mattei and his successors.

Rocchetta Mattei was not only Mattei's residence but also the headquarters, clinic and symbolic showcase of his system of electrohomeopathy. Here he received patients from Italy and abroad, drawn by treatments based on plant-derived remedies, medicated granules and so-called “electric fluids”.

Contemporary promotional literature and later local tradition report that members of European high society were treated or received at Rocchetta Mattei, including Ludwig of Bavaria, Alexander II of Russia, Empress Elisabeth of Austria ("Sisi") and Gioachino Rossini, alongside a wider bourgeois and aristocratic clientele. Some later sources identify the Bavarian ruler as Ludwig III of Bavaria, but institutional heritage descriptions often use only the less specific form “Ludwig of Bavaria”. The Italian heir to the throne, the Prince of Piedmont, also made an official visit in 1925.

The connection with Rossini also involved Mattei's family circle. An autograph letter written by Rossini in Paris on 15 December 1863 to Count Luigi Mattei, son of Cesare's brother Giuseppe, indicates that Luigi was following the composer's Italian property affairs while Rossini was living in France.

The demand for cures led to the construction of a number of small “climatic villas” in the surrounding estate, especially around the nearby Borgo dell’Archetta, to house patients during their stay.

Construction, collaborators and photographic documentation

During Mattei's lifetime the castle was continuously reshaped, with successive building campaigns adding towers, terraces, loggias and interiors in different styles. The architectural realisation of the Rocchetta was directed by Cesare Mattei as patron and guiding figure, but involved the collaboration of artists, craftsmen and local master builders rather than a single professional architect. Heritage catalogues and later historical accounts mention the Bolognese painter and scenographer Giulio Cesare Ferrari, together with other collaborators and local workers, as one of the figures involved in translating Mattei's ideas into drawings and built form during several construction phases.

The transformation of the Rocchetta was also recorded by 19th-century photography. The Bolognese photographer Pietro Poppi, founder of the studio Fotografia dell'Emilia, produced a series of views documenting the successive enlargements, alterations and modifications of the castle. Views of the Rocchetta appeared in Poppi's 1879 catalogue under the section "Paysages et villes"; by 1883 they formed a more substantial photographic group, and the 1888 general catalogue of the Fotografia dell'Emilia included a section specifically devoted to a third photographic campaign of Rocchetta Mattei. Individual negatives from the Poppi collection, such as the 1879–1883 view of the Loggia Carolina, also document parts of the castle that are now relevant to the restoration of the Arab-Moorish wing.

Late memorial projects and the Golden Protocol

In the final months of his life Mattei was still concerned with both the completion of the Rocchetta and the documentary commemoration of his electrohomeopathic enterprise. A letter of 15 March 1896, published by Renzo Zagnoni and Alex Vannini in the local historical journal Nuèter, shows that he wished his tomb, the church and the so-called "rooms of the plebiscite" ( stanze del Plebiscito ) to be completed. These rooms were intended to display letters, seals, stamps and testimonials from civil and religious authorities, notable figures and sovereigns who had expressed support for or interest in electrohomeopathy. Zagnoni and Vannini interpret the project as a planned memorial, within the castle, to the written memory of Mattei's medical enterprise.

The same documents refer to a Protocollo d'oro ("Golden Protocol"), described by Mattei in a letter to Cesare Fava as a dossier intended to complete a European plebiscite in favour of electrohomeopathy and to be displayed on the walls of a "new room" ( stanza Nova ). Zagnoni and Vannini identify it as a precious file of documents signed by people who supported Mattei's electrohomeopathy or reported favourable results from it. They also note that, although the dossier appears to have existed, it has not been found.

The correspondence with Fava also records the disorderly preservation of some of Mattei's papers shortly before his death. According to Zagnoni and Vannini, after Mario Venturoli had been excluded from the castle, the lawyer Turriccia took over the administrative direction, while Fava was entrusted with the production of the remedies and received the keys to the cabinet where instructions for their preparation and other important documents were kept. In a letter of 11 December 1895 Fava reported that, after receiving the key to the "cabinet of essences" ( armadio delle essenze ), he had found papers placed in disorder, including a packet addressed to Venturoli containing letters from the pope, the king and the queen, together with other documents and objects. The episode is relevant to the later history of the Rocchetta because it illustrates the fragmentary preservation of the documentary material connected with Mattei's medical and commemorative projects.