La Brunelde is a home of medieval origins that stands in the heart of the hills of Friuli in the country of Fagagna, just 60 minutes from Venice and Trieste. The house is surrounded by a large garden from which you can admire the beauty of the Friulian hill landscape; its origins are very ancient, in fact it overlooks the ancient Via del Sale.
Casaforte La Brunelde History
The building, erected on the ruins of a Roman agricultural-military villa, is historically linked to the counts of Arcano. In the Lombard period, in the eighth century and throughout the Middle Ages, it was a watchtower, in the sixteenth century it was transformed into a stronghold, in the nineteenth century it was transformed into a hunting lodge of the Counts of Arcano, to be finally used as a farm house the last century.
Built on three floors, the house has some rooms of which we think it is worth stressing the beauty and importance from the historical and architectural point of view. The "Canipa", located on the ground floor, is an ancient laboratory cellar and witnesses the original cobblestone paving, which was rediscovered thanks to the excavations carried out during the restoration work and which was placed under the supervision of the Superintendency to the Fine Arts. Another worthy of mention is the "Sala della Giustizia" on the upper floor, which opens up in all its majesty behind the ancient wooden and wrought iron door recovered in the Cervignano del Friuli prison. The name of this hall derives from the use that was made in the past era: it was in fact the "court", inside which were celebrated the trials related to the crimes committed in the surrounding lands.
Highly evocative is the studiolo, where he worked Il fortepiano in the Magna Room Giovanni Mauro d'Arcano, considered one of the most important burlesque poets of the sixteenth century, with seventeenth-century crimson silk wallpaper and the pompous "capocielo" that overlooks the desk: a huge tower family tree of the family and there is preserved the ancient part of the family archive, with original documents from the eleventh century.
His restoration took place through a meticulous and careful research of materials, as evidenced by the boards used for the floor recovered from an old Friulian dairy and used in the past for the processing of cheese.
Among the illustrious guests of Brunelde, in June 1731 there was the famous emasculated singer Carlo Broschi called "Farinelli". After a concert in the castle of Arcano, Pietro d'Arcano, Farinelli and a small group of instrumental friends continued to make music in the nearby Brunelde, where the singer stayed.