Landscape



The Farm Among the rural buildings the farm is a very characteristic one: it is built "a corte", that is around a yard, which may be square or rectangular. It is divided into the stable residence for the tenant or the peasants, the seasonal one for the rice-weeders and rice-cutters, and the parts destined to the stables, the barn, the outhouse and the producing activities. The yard was often fenced or hedged in to allow control over the employees and to discourage small country theft which was very common in the 17th/19th centuries. Inside the "yard", the tenant's house looks much more imposing than the other buildings where the workers live: it has moreover some decorative frieze. Half of the whole building is occupied by the stables, above which there are the barns, sheltered from bad weather by the characterisctic lattice of staggered bricks. Northwards there is always the "casera" (the dairy), a building where cheese is made and nearby the narrow "porcilaie" where pigs are bred using dairy refuse. Inside the "corte" there is usually the "aia" (threshing floor). These threshing floors were first built in beaten earth, then in bricks and later on in concrete. Here grass, cereals and rice were laid in the open air to dry in the sun. The farm developed in the fifteenth century for will of the rulers of the time and in the surroundings of Vigevano territory some examplaries of great historical interest may still be seen, as the Sforzesca and Villanova. Near the Sforzesca, built by Ludovico il Moro in 1486, there is the Pegorara, also built by the Moro to develop sheep breeding (pegora = sheep). Around the town there are numberless rural centres which deserve mentioning, such as San Vittore, the Favorita, the Presciutta, Fogliano, San Marco on the south, the Castellana, the composite Portalupa in Faenza and Tre Colombaie on the West. For centuries the farms have been self-sufficient: with the peasant working in the fields there were artisans who took care of the equipment and qualified personnel who provided food. Now the stables have been abandoned everywhere and many farms have decayed and are in a very bad condition.

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