A ricetto is not a castle and not a village: it is a fortified structure inside the settlement, where the goods of the lord or of the community were kept safe, fodder and wine, and where the people themselves withdrew when attacked. The one at Candelo was never permanently inhabited, and it is one of the best preserved examples in Europe.
What to see
The perimeter is a pentagon of about 470 metres, enclosing an area of 13,000 square metres: inside stand about two hundred buildings called cells, served by five east-west streets, the rue, crossed by two at right angles. The walls have cylindrical corner towers and break only on the south side, where in 1819 the town hall was built, neoclassical and decidedly at odds with the rest. The only way in was the gate tower, squared blocks below and brick above, with two openings closed by two drawbridges: a large one for carts, a small one for people on foot.
Visiting
The tallest building is the casa del Principe: Sebastiano Ferrero, feudal lord from 1496, carved it out at the start of the sixteenth century by raising and altering the cells that were already there. The cells today are not homes: nearly all belong to private owners and to associations from Candelo, and they house workshops, cellars, the documentation centre on the ricetti of Europe and a small museum of kitchen things. From the south-west tower a path drops to the church of Santa Maria along the roggia Marchesa, the canal that since 1561 has carried water to the Biella countryside and on to the Vercelli rice fields.
Our editors' tip
The story to remember is from 1499. Sebastiano Ferrero, judging too thin the hearth tax the people of Candelo paid him, laid claim to the ricetto: the judges called to decide threw the claim out. That is why this place is studied not only as architecture but as an institution, and why the historic carnival of Candelo still stages that quarrel.