Origin of la Castella, feudal home since 1092

The Castella of Persico, a farmhouse near Cremona, in the small village of Persico, was built on the foundations of a Roman fort. This fort dates back from the sixth and seventh century and was part of the Roman century, to the north of the city, as defence against the barbarians. Today Persico is in the Municipality of Persico Dosimo, which is a mile and a half from the city of Cremona. The transformation from fort to a farm can be traced back at the end of the tenth century. The lack of reliable documents, not found in the Record Office of Cremona, regarding the different properties of the farmhouse  occurred in a very long period of time, represents a  decisive condition for the historical reconstruction. However, property and management of the farmhouse  can be traced back at the beginning of the year one thousand from the Delmona family, an old family from Cremona. The Persico family, who owned many properties in the North of Cremona and along the river Oglio, gave their name to the village where the military structure was established. Some documents prove that this village was in "Court Bersigo”. But the names were often misspelled and were more than once: from Bersigo to Persigo, to Persich until the correct name Persico belonging to a family of "Milites" first, Exsercitales and Decurioni later, living in this area for a very long time. The  Persichelli (branch of the Persico family) had properties in the territory where the village of Persichello grew.

After the Duchy of Milan came under the power of the kingdom of Austria, many wars broke out between Spain and France. Cremona had little to suffer from this situation because the theatre of war was mainly in Piedmont and Western Lombardy.  The scene changed between 1647 and 1648 as the city was invested by different armies. In June 1648, when the farmhouse had already been turned into a Spanish military garrison, this place was in the middle of a bloody battle and suffered the attack of a French contingent. We do not know the outcome of this battle but it is presumed that the structure suffered extensive damages. The farmhouse was occupied by Benedictine monks from Nonantola between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. The monks restructured and regenerated all the complex creating their cells and reclaiming the land remained uncultivated for a long time.

In the year two thousand, the place was acquired by Valeriano Pozzi. He made a wise work of recovery  transforming all the place into a Congress Centre and Service Centre for Tourism under the name "Relais Convento”.

The attribution of "Castella" to the farmhouse of Persico, perhaps partially arbitrary, was given to the agricultural structures having sighting turrets and moat for defensive purposes. It is not known if the Castella had one or more turrets but it is certain that it was protected along its perimeter by a moat. This is also documented by the Census Teresian map of the eighteenth century.

Around the year one thousand, the Castella was transformed into a typical Cremonese farm with a quadrilateral shape. As other similar farms, some of which very large and capable of housing dozen of families, Relais Concento had a front access for the passage of workers, wagons and horses and an opening at the back for access to the fields. Unlike farms in the  upper Po Valley which has a "U" shape, most of the farms in the Cremonese area had the first mentioned feature. The keys of the portals were kept firmly in the hands of the owner or bailiff. This was the Cremonese farmhouse, built in large ownership of land mainly cultivated with cereals, far from urban centres, unique in itself. A system for a total economic process whose benefits went primarily to the owner, and then to the bailiff or tenant; a hierarchical power that put the farmer on the last rung of the ladder. With regards to the internal structures, the house of the farmer was considered less interesting than stables, threshing floor, barns and arcades. The farm, closed from the outside to be protected  from bandits and beggars, was also closed inside. Nevertheless, initially the inhabitants of the farmhouse were free to come and go. This freedom was strongly reduced in later centuries, and especially in the nineteenth century, when the isolation to the outside began to create commercial and social problems and produced the first movements of rebellion against the landowners. The great innovation to the "status" of farmer arrived from the church that, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, recognized "dignity" to workers. However this was not a true revolution, since for a long time farmers were "prisoners" in the farmhouse. Here life flowed according to a rhythm of constant hard work linked to the rise and fall of the sun.
In the  "History and stories of Cremona in the Middle Ages" the Castella witnessed the social, political and economic vicissitudes of the territory. It saw the extraordinary rise of the Association of Cremonesi Merchants between VII-VIII century, until the second half of the fourteenth, when the city lost its power over the navigation of the Po river.