LA «SETTIMA PORTA. QUI TROVASI UNA SCULTURA MARMOREA DEL SIGNORE E FONDATORE»: DOCUMENTI, NUOVE IPOTESI E INEDITI SULLE FASI COSTRUTTIVE E TRASFORMATIVE DEL CASTELLO DI TORRECHIARAV.

Torrechiara Castle in Langhirano, province of Parma, is rectangular with a tower at each corner. These are connected one to the other by lower buildings. Sitting on top of a hill it's surrounded by walled terraces. It has always been considered one of the best preserved examples of little altered 1400s architecture. Jacopo Caviceo, a contemporary of the nan who built the castle, Pier Maria Rossi, describes it in his writings. So too does Vincenzo Carrari, a couple of centuries later in the 1680s. Both write of a walled inscription above the entrance gate, the seventh gate, on the west side. It states that the castle was completed in thirty years, between 1448 and 1460. Despite the writings of the two above, both Ireneo Affò in the late 1700s, and Lorenzo Molossi in the 1830s insisted to their historian colleagues that the castle had been built in twelve years, between 1448 and 1460. They based their conclusions on a different walled inscription above the arched entrance to the ravelin, triangular fortress, in the northwest, the sixth gate. During numerous restorations the writer has uncovered a variety of archaeological evidence buried within the architectural hotchpotch. This includes the rectangular recess above the "seventh gate" tlxat would have housed the inscription and a statue of Pier Maria Rossi. Both were removed during Francesco Sforza di Santa Fiora s renovations during the 1680s. Their loss me, ant that the information they carried was blown to oblivion. For a long time it was difficult to analyse in depth, the Pier Maria Rossi transformations during those thirty years' building work. This paper concentrates on some of the work done during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, leaving aside later renovations during the late mediaeval period to suit the needs of a building that was to house a Renaissance court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]