The castle of Formigine stands in Piazza Calcagnini, at the centre of the town. It was born in 1201, when the Commune of Modena, after a defeat at the hands of the troops of Reggio, decided to garrison the border with Reggio by building a fortified complex here; excavations have shown, however, that the place was already inhabited around the tenth century, around a church of San Bartolomeo and its cemetery. In 1405 Nicolò III d'Este granted Formigine in fief to Marco I Pio, and under the Pio the castle took today's form: beside the medieval fortification, the rocchetta, rose the marquises' palace and the clock tower. In 1599 it returned to the Este, and in 1648 it was ceded to Marquis Mario Calcagnini. After the Second World War the town council bought it, rebuilt it and made it the town hall, until 2002.
What to see
The rocchetta is the defensive part: the south-east tower, the keep, that is, the clock tower, and the guardhouse with its double ravelins, from which the four drawbridges were worked, two for pedestrians and two for carts. Since 2007, after a major restoration, it has housed an archaeological and multimedia museum, with the finds from the excavations and the interactive installations by Studio Azzurro.
The archaeological area inside the walls keeps the remains of the thirteenth-century curtain wall, of the old parish church of San Bartolomeo «della Rocca» and of the medieval cemetery. The excavations, directed by Sauro Gelichi of Ca' Foscari University of Venice, also found the village that in the fourteenth century had grown up against the fortress, and which the Pio demolished to make it their garden. The marquises' palace, the residential part, keeps traces of frescoes.
Visiting
The museum ticket office and the tourist information point are in the marquises' palace, which also houses the town council chamber and a restaurant. Times and prices should be checked with the town council of Formigine.
Our editors' tip
Under the clock tower there is an underground room which in the last war served as an air-raid shelter. A bomb that fell in the inner garden brought down its vault, and under the rubble twenty people died, among them the owners of the castle. Their daughter, who was a few months old, survived.
