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| Soragna: art and history |
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Soragna,
which became a royal court during the IX century, passed
into the hands of the Lupi family in the XI century, who obtained
its imperial investiture in 1347. The current village was reconstructed
from scratch during the XIV century around the fortress, which
at the end of the fourteenth century, thanks to a license from
the duke of Milan Gian Galeazzo Visconti, was transformed by
the Lupi family into a building of a square layout, with four
corner towers, a central courtyard and a keep joined to the
facade. In the sixteenth century, numerous works were carried
out, transforming the late-fourteenth century military building
into a magnificent stately residence. In the '30s, the marquis
Giampaolo Meli Lupi built a large garden on the north side of
the fortress, and called the Modenese painter Nicolò
dell'Abate to his court, who frescoed different rooms with putti,
mythological animals and festoons of jasmine, and carried out
the cycle of paintings on the Labours of Hercules. With the
elimination of the residues of the defensive structures towards
the end of the seventeenth century, the Fortress was definitively
transformed into a Baroque palace, whilst at the start of the
XIX century, the Renaissance-style garden gave way to large,
Romantic, English-style park.
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