Rocchetta Mattei

On a rocky spur above the Reno valley at Grizzana Morandi, towers, stairwells and Moorish arches pile into a distinctive residence of nineteenth-century Italy. Count Cesare Mattei began building in 1850, mixing medieval, Renaissance, Moorish and Liberty motifs, and the castle still stages his singular idea of nobility.

Why it matters

The Rocchetta Mattei combines several architectural languages in a nineteenth-century residence on a crag above the Reno valley. The complex reflects Mattei’s interests in architecture, religion and the medical system he developed; after decades of abandonment, restoration began following its acquisition by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Bologna.

What to notice

The residence is a labyrinth of corridors, halls and staircases: spiral flights, sudden level changes, rooms that borrow light from unexpected quarters. The Moorish-Arab wing has horseshoe arches and polychrome surfaces, set alongside the medieval fabric of the older stronghold beneath the nineteenth-century additions. In the castle chapel a monumental tomb holds the count's remains. From the upper terraces the view runs along the middle Reno valley, with the historic Porrettana road following the water below.

Context and history

Cesare Mattei was born in Bologna in 1809 into a wealthy family, stood among the hundred founders of the local savings bank in 1837, and received the title of count from Pope Pius IX in 1847 after a land donation near Comacchio. Disillusioned with politics after the upheavals of 1848-49, he turned to medicine, assembling a system he called elettromeopatia — part homeopathy, part his own invention — which he administered from the castle. In 1850 he bought the site with the ruins of the Rocca di Savignano, a thirteenth-century stronghold, and directed the works himself, living there permanently from 1859. His remedies were exported worldwide; by 1884 the network counted 107 distribution points. Family financial disaster led him to disinherit his relatives and adopt his collaborator Mario Venturoli in 1888. He died in 1896. The enterprise carried on, unevenly, until 1959, when the castle passed to the wife of a local merchant who ran it as a visitor attraction before neglect set in during the 1980s. In 2005 the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Bologna bought the complex and began a philological restoration; the castle reopened in 2015 and is now managed by the Comune di Grizzana Morandi with the metropolitan city and the union of Apennine communes.