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Historical outlines
The great peasant complex of the “masseria” is one fortified small farm much diffusing in Sicily. It represents one of the typical elements of the landscape, for the historical role and like meaning element of architecture and transformation of the territory.
The masseria is the expression of a tied geo-economic organization to the latifondo, the great land property that fed the unearned incomes of the aristocratic classes and the bourgeoisie.
The masserie were therefore of the great inhabited agricultural companies, sometimes, also from the land owners, but the great rural construction also comprised the lodgings of the peasants, in sure zones also only ages them, the stables, I placed for forages and the harvests to you.The birth of the masseria was often a product of the baronial colonization of immense uncultivated abandoned inner areas and, in the years between the 1500's and the 1700's, when Spain in order to provision of the cereals, granted the licence of ripopolamento to the noble ones of Sicily which succeeded in to even found of the true and own villages in the outskirtses of the original construction.
Still today in the Sicily, in the zones of traditional agricultural use, it is possible to generally meet such constructions of remarkable volume and extension in abandonment but sometimes restored and red-use as agrituristiche companies.
Presentation
Center and symbol of the great land property, property left at death of the feudale system, the masseria is born as takeover of padronale type of control and organization of the latifondo and has to the origin a specific valence works them in relation to the cultivations and historically dominant activities in the sicialian territory: the granicoltura above all and the breeding. Specificities that with the fragmentation of the great property and the introduction of cultivations diversified are gradually lost through several adaptations, that they have concurred the insertion of functions tied to the new requirements. The compact mass of such buildings more or little complexes, more or less conserved in the original order, marks the sicialian rural landscape in meaningful way, much more than the same function of control to the center of the feudo it often determines an isolated and barycentric location to them in the territory.
With “the masseria” term it is wanted to be meant therefore, one rural dwelling of campaign, based mostly on the granicoltura and the breeding. In so far as - widely diffused between the peasants and the small owners or renters or coloni - any type of rural dwelling can be designated like masseria, to prescind from its shape or building construction.
The misunderstanding that can rise from this popular interpretation, is without a doubt serious to the ends of one classification of the shapes or types of the rural dwelling. The masseria” term to those complex shapes of rural dwelling can be limited “, that they represent the typical fruit of the land large estate ownership.
The masseria is born directly from the limestone on which I found myself easy under the little centimeters of humus. It crams you of the doors and of the windows, it arches to it and the piattabande, the thresholds and the basolati ones, are of hard limestone; the rest of the masonry is of tender limestone, whose varied color the clearest yellow to the gray. These constructions are realized to dry, without malta and without intonaco, from expert laborers peasants; the same ones that constructs to the walls and the terrazzamenti.
The walls have a medium height of a meter and they are distinguished in the modicano and ragusano type. Their structure, reinforced from slabs crosspieces and opportunely drenate, can last integral for some decade. The walls regulate the alternations, recingono the gardens and the porcilai, proteggono the young carob trees, contain the banks of the torrents and in the terrazzamenti, they constitute the isometrica measure of mountains.
The type more dramatic than these constructions, is the recinzioni of the ancient masserie where sheep raise themselves, “mannare”. In these fencings the wall to dry catches up the four meters of height, and is crowned from jutting out stone slabs sixty, seventy centimeters to defense from the attacks of the lupi.
The importance of one masseria was marked from the presence of the church. The owner very reserved a distinguished apartment of the complex.
From when the necessity of the recinzione it went diminishing, the court has been opened in more directed correlation with around. Then the house of the master is distinguished from the complex of the masseria, contrasting for the better degree than constructive definition and for the presence of the decorations. They can have two bodies also distinguished, or the villa placed side by side to the peasant one, with the contrast of the pavilion roof very defined respect the neighbors, spioventi bottoms. These are made of girders of wood covered with tegole of cooked.
In the more recent masserie, of the end of the 800, under the infuence of the manualistica the tipologia has been simplified. The court has grown tall, to its greater sides has aligned the factories.
Various from the masseria of the plateau it is that one of the hollow ones. The masseria of “ciumara”. In these the logon between stones and water is always explicitly represented. The cultivations more are differentiated and more complex is the articulation glides down - volumetric.
The houses peasants of the small and averages property are much simple. They derive from a monocellular nucleus which the other elements join to all. According to these modalities of aggregation usually they are distinguished in the two types to overlapping plans or plant giustapposta.
Being the greater part of the formed ibleo territory from limestone cliffs, the materials more widely used in building as primary element is: the “stone of famous Modica” for the qualities of greater hardness, and the “stone of Siracusa”, the much more tender and less workable one.
The rural buildings, in general terms, turn out in state of advanced degradation, the abandonment and the absence of periodic maintenances has involved in some cases, the loss of history pieces of the rural civilization, while in other cases, the manomissioni due to indiscriminate restructures or the insertion of modern constructive elements, has made, that they were completely stravolte original the tipologiche and architectonic characteristics.
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