Castell’Arquato
A medieval corner. Romanesque and Gothic among the most real, but also fascinating episodes of “gothic revival” are, here and there, walking in the village of Castell’Arquato in the province of Piacenza.
A cross-section of medieval society, in the period of transition from the free municipality to the lordship, is offered by the village of Castell’Arquato, which military and civilian events intertwined with the rise, the power and the loss of a great man of arms, Alberto Scotus, who was able to settle on the Piacenza seat for three times from the end of the Thirteenth Century to the end of the first decade of the Fourteenth Century.
The important monuments still preserved in the village of Castell’Arquato (the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria, the Palazzo del Podesta, the Rocca Viscontea, the Palace of Justice now incorporated in the Duke’s Palace and the Fountain of Monteguzzo), make it possible to trace the story of this brave and enterprising ‘new man’ and also the subsequent events of the village, from the passage to papal dominion (1324-1336) to that of the Viscontis.
The village of Castell’Arquato, among the most beautiful medieval villages in Italy, reserves exciting discoveries, like that of a small medieval brick house, characterized by protruding upper floors which could offer a shelter to people working on the outside, or that of an exceptional immersion baptismal font, carved in a single block of stone of about two meters in diameter, found during excavations in 1912 and belonging to the primitive Collegiate Church of Santa Maria (VII-VIII century), or the cloister of the Collegiate Church, one of the most evocative and poetic corners of the village…