○ 1246 AD : THE CASTLE OF SCARICALASINO
§ Birth of a fortified village §
Various historians have presumed that around the VII century AD a Germanic tribe belonging to the Goths, settled in a strategic location of the Apennine mountains, amongst the high vales of the Savena and Idice creeks, creating a small military and agricultural colony.
The location became known in latin as Mons Gothorum (Goths’ Mountain), from which the current town of “Monghidoro” derives its name.
The first document, which mentions the curia Mongodori, is an 1145 administrative act. Historians believe that the first church and baptistery stood on the site of today’s cemetery.
At that time, the town was part of a vast land-holding possession that stretched from Pianoro, near Bologna, to Barberino del Mugello, near Florence, belonging to a noble family of Longobard origins: the Ubaldini.
Toward the end of the XII century, the Municipality of Bologna began to assert their control over the mountain territories; to facilitate the connections, the construction of a road began that coasted the right bank of the Savena Creek, and arrived in Monghidoro.
To safeguard the thoroughfare, in 1246 the Municipality of Bologna built a castrum, a fortified hamlet on a knoll overlooking the site of the parish church. Scaricalasino was born.
The name of Scaricalasino (Unburden Donkey), used until recent times, refers to the fact that it was necessary to unload the donkeys used to carry burden, after a long and steep climb leading to the town, and allow them to rest.
The castle was used as headquarters of local soldiers under orders of the “Captain of the Mountain” or a vicar appointed by the Municipality of Bologna. The building declined and eventually abandoned around the second half of the XIV century. Then the villagers re-used the stones to construct new houses beside the existing ones, outside the defensive walls; thereby the site where the castle stood was nicknamed in local dialect Castlâz, or “old/run-down Castle”.
Even today, between the old houses sited above the town piazza, it is still possible to trace the route to the old castle.
- The place called "Castellaccio" (Ruined Castle) where once stood the castle of Scaricalasino -
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