The first floor and the Noble Wing

Audio

Descrizione

The archival collection housed today in Miradolo Castle conserves the documents collected by the Cosso Foundation over the years as part of its work as caretaker and custodian of the estate and the memory of the Massel and Cacherano di Bricherasio families.

The collection is made up of records dating from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Unfortunately, however, it holds only a part of the documents pertaining to those two illustrious Piedmontese families. Their original archives were broken up over the years and today are found spread across various archival collections in Italy and other countries. Thanks to the painstaking catalogue work and heritage research conducted by the Cosso Foundation, in partnership with the University of Turin, the archival collection has allowed us to reconstruct some of the key moments in the history of the castle and its estate.

Expense records, for instance, show the payments made to Xavier Kurten, one of the greatest landscape architects of the nineteenth century, for the design and creation of the “New Miradolo Gardens.” However, the inflows and outflows recorded in the ledgers tell us not only the dates and the size of investments made across time for plants and flowers, renovations or new building work, but also something about the cultural and affective meaning behind each of those initiatives. Some correspondence, often written in French, tells us about events or discusses the cultural and political panorama in Europe. In one letter, dated 1812, the “nascent Romantic taste” is described as “an atmosphere pervading Europe,” and suggests an active, even literary and philosophical, participation in the changes of the era. Numerous letters are addressed to prominent figures such as Lidia Poët, the first woman admitted to the Italian Bar Association. Many of the documents are the birth certificates of family members or marriage certificates. Vintage photographs and postcards picture people and places that tell us of friendships and travels. Greeting cards, with their choice of words and handwriting, convey sentiments and affection.

Even the words you are listening to now come in part from the archival collection. In life, just as for the castle and its park, sometimes what is no longer with us can still be present somehow, a fertile absence that is not a lacking, but an opportunity to learn, understand, and imagine.