A Castle in Luzzana!
“In Luzzana a villa palace with an adjoining garden of the illustrious Patrizia Veneta family of the Giovanelli barons, owners of very extensive landed estates in this village also”.
This is how Giovanni Maironi da Ponte, in his famous Dizionario Odeporico, describes the most important architectural presence, both historical and environmental, in the Luzzana area.
The definition of “castle” is improper and certainly reductive – as, moreover, already emerges from Maironi’s writing – since the former Giovanelli property, rather than being a single building well-defined in outline and appearance, was articulated in a series of courtyard buildings (some rural) distributed on a plateau halfway up the right side of the valley. Among these, the buildings known as “Barbino” and “Molendino” stood out, as well as the Castle and the Patriarch’s block, of a residential nature.
The military origin of the building is attested both by its architectural layout, which reveals its primitive defensive and control function – considering its position about the hydrography and orography of the valley, the traffic routes, the organisation of the buildings and the wall texture of some structural parts – and by the presence of objective dating elements. In particular, the keystone of the pointed arch in the entrance hall bears a date, today only readable in the first three digits: 1, 2, and 9. Moreover, the military origin is confirmed by the constancy with which the toponym recurs in maps and cabrei since the transformation into a villa – to recall Maironi’s text – had already occurred some time ago.
