Villa Torlonia

Let yourself be enveloped in the veils of history and discover the extraordinary events of the ancient Giovedìa Castle, today's Villa Torlonia.
In this evocative place, the testimonies of powerful families are piled up: from the Malatesta to the Zampeschi, from the Riario-Sforza to the Onesti-Braschi, up to the influential Torlonia family that marked the destiny of this territory forever. Here the fate of the town of San Mauro is intertwined with that of Giovanni Pascoli and his family.
Various terms have been used over time to describe this residence in an attempt to capture its essence. Yet,
even today, Villa Torlonia retains its many souls, difficult to encapsulate in a single definition. From Malatesta castle to agricultural estate of excellence, the structure currently hosts convention halls, theatre, temporary exhibitions and the Pascoliano Multimedia Museum.
Here culture, innovation and technology meet to enhance Pascoli'
s poetry through an immersive and evocative journey made possible thanks to digital scenography, video mapping, sound and word games, lulled by the reciting voices of Luca Ward, Emanuela Rossi and Lino Guanciale.
Together with the house where he was born, now the Casa Pascoli
Museum, Villa Torlonia constitutes the Pascoli Poetry Park born in March 2019 to ideally unite the places of the poet's heart.
The complex is accessible to the public on guided and individual tours and provides extraordinary openings and exceptional visits at particular times of the year. The external courtyard, surrounded by greenery, is embellished by the small church of Saints Peter and Paul and the Locanda del Poeta where accommodation and refreshments can be found.

A bit of History

The area that corresponds to the territory of the villa was already inhabited in Roman times.
The toponym Giovedìa, which runs through documents from 1000 to 1500, refers to the cult of Jupiter and indicates a real locality, distinct from the nearby San Mauro, in a strategic
position between the Uso and Rio Salto rivers.
A precious parchment dating back to 1057 describes the Court of Giovedìa

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with a castle, a church, estates and hamlets, and it is in the following centuries that plundering and devastation lead to the destruction of the fortress until Giovedìa was reduced to the status of a simple villa, i.e. an open rural village.
It is not until the early 15th century that Thursdaya is reported as a tomb, indicating that the defensive fortifications have been restored.
In the first half of the century, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, gave his mother Antonia da Barignano the territories of San Mauro and Giovedìa. In
1578, Giovedìa returned under the dominion of the Church, becoming part of the Legation of Romagna, and in Vatican maps it is depicted as a building surmounted by an imposing central tower, from which the epithet Torre di Giovedìa, later simply Torre, derives.
At the end of the 18th century, Pope Pius VI granted the Tower, by then a flourishing estate, to his nephew Luigi Onesti Braschi. Later, in 1828, it was purchased by Alessandro Torlonia, who appointed the Pascoli family administrator of his property in Romagna. In
the 20th century, Villa Torlonia underwent a slow and inexorable process of territorial
disintegration which, after the Second World War, was consumed in a very short time. The Villa became a refuge for displaced persons and a poultry farm, and in 1983 the Municipality of San Mauro Pascoli took over ownership, directing and overseeing numerous restoration works.

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Legends & Ghost Stories

A murder is recounted here: one of the most famous murders in the patrie lettere.
A plot: a collection of people and interests converged to eliminate Ruggero Pascoli, the poet's father. A heinous crime, which took place on 10th August 1867

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, which turned Giovanni Pascoli's life upside down and led, within a few years, to the ruin of 'an entire flourishing family'.
On that day, Ruggero was supposed to meet an official of the Torlonia family in Cesena: Achille Petri. Hours pass and Petri does not arrive. Ruggero left to return to San Mauro. Two men crouching behind a ditch near Villa di Gualdo, on the "strada maestra" (main road) between Savignano and Longiano, fire a rifle shot that reaches Pascoli in the forehead.
Three trials are
opened while the papers relating to the autopsy and the report with the names of the perpetrators disappear. The assassins will never be brought to justice and the trial papers will end up in the rubble in 1916, the year of the death of Pietro Cacciaguerra, fingered by the circumstantial evidence as the instigator.
The armed hand is that of Luigi Pagliarani, described, vox populi, as terrible in appearance: long beard, fiery eyes. It is
rumoured that he would expose his wife outside the window holding her by the hair and order the carabinieri to stay barricaded in the barracks.
Between belated testimonies, investigations carried out by the Pascoli brothers themselves, interrogations, deception, threats and death threats, Caterina Allocatelli Vincenzi, the poet's mother, had
no choice but to confide her sorrows to her faithful mare, her husband's only companion on that last journey.
An unsolved murder to which only Poetry was able to give redemption, immortal memory, noble revenge.
"This memory of 10th August 1867 I dedicate to some atrocious men; whether they are now spectres perpetually wandering from the place where they killed to the place where they were killed, whether they are wrinkled, white heads bowing evermore to the extreme Shadow that broods revenge, or whether they are pale foreheads trying to rise slowly hoping that it will never come again, will never be there again...patience again, a little more patience! patience! patience!"

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