Ricetto di Candelo :: Borghi Travel

Elenco Strutture

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Ricetto di Candelo

The medieval Pompei of the Biella Area

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The name
Possibly related to the pre-Celtic origins of the area. Candt = stone and elu, a suffix indicating a place near heights or water, suggest the presence of the Ligurians.

The name Ricetto derives from the Latin receptum (shelter, refuge) and indicates a defended place, enclosed by fortifications.

History
• 988: the name of Candelo (Canderium) appears for the first time in the document by which Otto III confirms Manfredo’s feudal possession of the village. The following year Otto III enfeoffs the Church of Vercelli with Candelo.

• 1179: the counts of Biandrate transfer their possessions in Candelo to the Church of Vercelli.

• Late 13th-early 14th cent.: the inhabitants of Candelo build the Ricetto on the land of local lords, for which they originally pay an annuity that they later redeem.

• 1360: 157 storage shelters are counted in the Ricetto (today there are about 200).

• 1374: the first among the Biella lands to do so, Candelo of its own free will declares its submission to the dukes of Savoy. From 1381 to 1387 it is under the jurisdiction of the Captain of Santhià, then Amedeo VII of Savoy gives it in fief to Gerardo Fontana.

• 1496: the Fontana cede the Candelo fief to Sebastiano Ferrero, a financial advisor and treasurer, first for the Duchy of Savoy and later for that of Milan. Sebastiano Ferrero is succeeded by his nephew Filiberto, adopted in 1517 by Ludovico Fieschi, Count of Masserano, the start of the Ferrero-Fieschi dynasty.

• 1554-58: caught up in the fight between the French and the Spanish, Candelo is occupied several times by French troops. In one of the many reversals of the situation, the Spanish force the French barricaded in the Ricetto to surrender, causing considerable damage to the Ricetto in the process. In 1561 the Ricetto fortifications and the storage shelters are repaired.

• 1577: the Candelo fiefdom is promoted to the status of county in favor of Besso Ferrero Fieschi.

• 1630-32: the population is decimated by the plague. From 1644 to 1649, new Spanish occupations bring about fires and destruction.

• 1785: Carlo Sebastiano Ferrero Fieschi is the last feudal lord of Candelo. With the Napoleonic occupation the village’s political-administrative structure is changed.

The Emotions of a Lost Rural World
The Ricetto is a collective fortification which came into being through the initiative of the people of Candelo in the period spanning the 1200s and 1300s.

It is the best preserved of all the ricetti in Piedmont and represents the memory of the people of Candelo, who used it as a storage area for agricultural products in peacetime and as a shelter during times of war or danger. It has been preserved thanks to its peasant origin; in fact, until just a few years ago people used the “cells” to make wine and for safe storage of their harvests.

The Ricetto has a pentagonal plan, with a perimeter of about 470 meters. It is 110 meters wide and 120 meters long, covering an area of 13,000 square meters. Within this tight space there are approximately 200 storage cells, almost all of which are privately owned today.

The walls go around the entire perimeter of the Ricetto, with the exception of the southern side, where the Palazzo Comunale (Town Hall) now stands, a neoclassical building constructed in 1819 in strident contrast with the medieval architecture of the Ricetto. The walls are built out of stones set in a herringbone pattern, and are topped by watch walkways all around.

The corners of the Ricetto are protected by four round towers, all of which originally opened toward the inside to facilitate defense operations. The terracotta coping, with corbel brick decorations, are from later periods.

The only entrance was protected at the south by a large tower-gate, and at the center of the north side, between two round towers, the curtain tower still stands, made almost entirely out of large square blocks.

Passing through the tower-gate, one comes to a small square paved with rounded stones from the nearby stream. The largest building is the Prince’s Palace, built for Sebastiano Ferrero in 1496, when he became the feudal lord of Candelo. The palace has a stronghold structure, and underwent various medications in later periods.

The rue (from the French word for “street”) are paved with cobblestones slanting toward the middle and with a south-north slope to allow rainwater to drain toward the curtain tower. The street network is composed of five east-west roads intersected by two perpendicular streets. The main rua, in the middle, was built to accommodate cart traffic, while the side rue are narrower.

The buildings, which are a series of individual, non-communicating structures, are grouped into nine blocks. The ground floor room (caneva) has a dirt floor and is used for winemaking operations and wine storage, and is entered from the street through a door. The room on the upper floor (solarium) is a dry environment, ideal for storing grains, and is reached directly from the rua by means of the lobbia, a wooden balcony that rests on the beams separating the caneva and the solarium. The two rooms are not communicating, so as to reduce temperature changes to a minimum. The best preserved lobbia is that near the council chamber.

Leaving the Ricetto and going down the grassy stretch to the left of the southwest tower, one comes to the Church of Santa Maria by means of a lane that follows the Roggia Marchesa, the canal that since 1561 has brought water to the surrounding fields and to the Vercelli rice-paddies.

In these fields, as far as the plain of the Cervo stream, there are the pits for the maceration of hemp, which has not been cultivated since the early 1900s.

The first mention of the church, which had undergone various remodelings, goes back to 1182. It has an attractive Romanesque façade made from river stones laid in a herringbone pattern. Inside, there are columns with beautiful 15th-century capitals, frescoes from the late 15th century, and a pulpit from the mid-17th century.

Local products
A salami called salam ‘d l’ula. Also typical are the Ciavarin crunchy sweets.

Local dishes
The paletta candelese is made from pork shoulder, with the fat removed and trimmed, salted and massaged manually, and is produced by traditional methods in limited quantities.