ZENA
(78 METRES ABOVE SEA LEVEL – 3,5 KM FROM CARPANETO)
The hamlet, exclusively rurally destinated is composed by San Prospero Church, Perotti Castle with its adjacent pertinences and by various residences recently built. Excluding this central nucleus all the vast territory included between Zena and Cadeo is divided into 33 fertile and rich farmsteads dedicated to the Saints, both feminine and masculine. In the country it was tradition to dedicate the dwelling to a Saint that would preserve the crops and protect the family. The presence of primitive anthropoid communities is confirmed by the recovery of huts’ bottoms at about 1,50 metres deep under the ground with the remains of braziers that date back to the Palaeolithic Period.
The site’s relevance during the Roman epoch would be documented by the fact that right through that territory passed an axis of the Centuriation that, extending until Val Chero, connected the Municipium Veleiate with the Consular street Emilia.
During the Middle Ages the site was traversed by crowds of Byzantine Greeks that, after taking the Val Chero’s shortcut, inserted themselves in the Val Tolla Monastery in first variation of the Via Francigena.
THE CASTLE
The Castle, with squared plant, still maintains - despite the numerous elaborations suffered through the centuries – marked military disposition. One of the four parts was demolished in XVIII century.
In the hall there’s a big fireplace on whose top there’s the frescoed aristocratic emblem of the Farnese family. The building and its adjacent lands have recently been subjected to a cautious and scientific restoration work.
SAN PROSPERO’S CHURCH
The Eighteenth-century Church dedicated to St. Prospero keeps many pieces and many recent artistic testimonies of the ex-Parish Priest Don Achille Sgorbati. The Artist-Priest composed in 1972 a big polyptych, made up of 23 tempera-panels on which were depicted scenes of Christ’s life according to St. Luca’s Gospel.
The ninety illustrations depicted, with squared and thin features, re-invoked the rude medieval mysticism. The interior, with unique aisle and barrel vault, maintains an refined crucified Christ and a statue of the Virgin made with wood and dated XVIII century.
(Translated by Laura Fugazzi)