Le case del Capitolo

Around San Candido's collegiate church, chapter houses once provided residences for the canons. A building register from 1593 records the houses, and several remain in the historic centre.

Why it matters

The canons of the collegiate chapter held separate households and received a chapter house with land as part of their office. The chapter's building register, the Fabricatur Puech, survives in a 1593 volume listing nine houses and three parish holdings at Sillian, Dobbiaco and Villabassa; three further houses were added later. The register documents the dwellings and administration of this chapter town.

What to notice

The Prepositura, the provost's seat, was built around 1300 and took its present form after the 1554 fire. The 1593 register records the Decanato as the dean's residence and inventories its furnishings.

The Antico Decanato retains a barrel-vaulted kitchen and a Gothic fresco above an older Romanesque arrow slit. Casa Köck housed a canon until 1930; the sacristan's house, recorded from 1609, was demolished in 1770 and rebuilt on a smaller scale.

Il Granaio is among the village's oldest preserved buildings. Its east section dates to the eighth century and its west wing to 1384. It stored grain for the provost and dean; a Latin school was also based there by the twelfth century.

Context and history

The register and the later inventories of 1785 open a window on daily life that few monuments offer. They record cellars, pantries, granaries with their grain containers, kitchens, parlours and stables — and also neglect. The house in Via dei Tintori, farthest from the collegiate church, was poorly maintained precisely because of that distance, and a renovation planned in 1735 was postponed for lack of funds. A separate early seventeenth-century school building on Piazza del Magistrato, known as the house of the organist, held the village school; its assistant master also served as church organist, which gave the house its name. The ensemble documents the ranks of provost, dean and sacristan, as well as the chapter's educational, storage and administrative functions.