Top 5 Castles around San Martino In Rio

The Campori castle is the symbol of Soliera with its medieval architecture and the 25-metre high tower. It is currently owned by the municipality, has been renovated, and often hosts cultural events and exhibitions.

Rocca di Soliera building very well kept in the city center

The museums of the Palazzo dei Pio are now presented as a coordinated system of three exhibition routes - Museo del Palazzo, Museo della Città, Museo al Deportato - that cater to the diverse needs that the many valuable and prestigious spaces of the Renaissance Palazzo dei Pio ( Museum of the Palace) and to give the extensive and diverse historical and artistic legacy of the collections a contextual, rational and structured place. which are given a role in an exhibition context that aims to convey a comprehensive picture of the development and history of the city (city museum).

historical point of interest, with a beautiful square in front of it, potential refreshment point. Always visitable

in the center of the village. Interesting work of the artist Pomodoro.

Created by the sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro, the obelisk for Cleopatra, granted on free loan to the Municipality of Soliera for three years, is a fourteen-meter work, designed in 1989 in reference to the staging of Cleopatra and built in 2008 in steel corten and bronze. The four vertical faces present a series of emblematic and symbolic signs that refer to the Egyptian hieroglyphs and the informal sign. The chromatic diversity between the rusty corten frame and the patinated bronze inserts give solemnity to the work that deeply connotes the public space in which it is installed.

The existence of a fortified structure in Soliera is mentioned for the first time in a papal bull of 1153 but a previous document certifies that in 1106 there was already a "castrum", that is, a fortified settlement. In the communal period Soliera was under the dominion of the Municipality of Modena. The exact date is not known but probably around 1325 it was destroyed, by the Bolognese and pontifical troops or by the armies of the Lombard League. In 1370 the Este family prevailed: they conquered Soliera and built a fort, described in the documents of the time as a "well-equipped castle". After various vicissitudes, the castle returned to the Este family who, in 1636, sold it to the Campori family for 50 thousand scudi. The first Marquis of Soliera was Pietro, a trusted man of the Borghese family and a very influential figure of the clergy, so much so that he came close to being appointed pope. In the over 300 years of their stay, the Campori extended the castle and made many interventions, which definitively transformed it from a fortress to a noble residence. Their coat of arms - a shield bearing two eagles and six six-pointed stars - is painted and sculpted in many places in the castle. The Campori family remained owners until 1976, when they ceded the castle to the parish. In 1990 the castle was purchased by the Municipality of Soliera, which has since completely restored it and used it as a seat of services and activities open to citizens.

La Rocca, surrounded by a lawn, is located in the heart of the small and characteristic historic center of San Martino in Rio in Emilia: with a quadrangular plan it preserves a square corner tower, with Ghibelline battlements. Belonging to the Canossa family, the Roberti family, then to the Este family and finally to the Marquis Paolo Rango d'Aragona, it now houses the Museum of Agriculture and the Rural World, the Coppelli Art Gallery, the Civic Library, the Historical Archive and the Open Archive for Henghel Gualdi. Inside, the most significant rooms are: the 15th century Chapel of San Giovanni, built in 1395, which still retains the terracotta bands of the portal, the apse and the original altar in Verona marble with the sandstone coat of arms of the Roberti da Tripoli and a valuable San Martino, also in sandstone; and some rooms with painted chests, frescoes and stuccos dating back to the 15th-18th centuries. In the heart of the Torrazzo the unicorn room stands out: on the fourteenth-century structure, Borso d’Este commissioned the tempera decorations in the mid-fifteenth century: in this period some painters from the Erri family work. The representation tells about some "enterprises" of the Este house, including the mythical animal.