Casa Baronale Riccati

Casa Baronale Riccati in Manta preserves an eighteenth-century silk-reeling workshop within a patrician residence.

Why it matters

The complex is a rare surviving example of an integrated silk filanda, where industrial work and aristocratic domestic architecture were designed together. It records the diversification of Manta's landowning families into silk production.

What to notice

The buildings are arranged symmetrically around a courtyard. The arcaded portico has framed panels between pilasters, while vaulted ceilings include lunettes and sail segments. The central workshop space was designed for forty fire-heated basins, each with a separate chimney, used in reeling silk from cocoons.

Context and history

The Riccati family appears in Manta's municipal records from the sixteenth century. Giovanni Riccati developed ironworking and silk production in the Varaita valley; his descendants established two large filande in Manta. Casa Baronale Riccati was built in the 1790s for trattura, the reeling stage of silk production, and remained in operation into the 1840s. Attribution to Sebastiano Riccati is a hypothesis, not a confirmed fact.