1737.
This date, carved by the stonemasons of Montovolo on the stone lintel above the mill door, marks the beginning of our story. It was long before the French Revolution, in a time when houses were built to last and stones carried the work and memory of entire generations.
It is not the only date that appears on the walls. On the stone lintels and masonry you can also read 1840, 1844, 1877, 1883, and 1893. Year after year, work after work, the house grew, adapted and changed, gradually taking on the form it has today: a small hamlet gathered around the mill.
The complex – a manor house overlooking many surrounding lands – was built by the father and paternal uncles of Ruffilla Pelagalli, the ancestor of the family. It included the mill with two millstones – still visible today – one used to grind flour for animals and the other for flour for human consumption, as well as the blacksmith’s forge, the bread oven, the henhouse, the stable and the hayloft.
A small dynamo connected to the mill’s water wheel provided electricity to the house at a time when public power lines had not yet arrived: a clear sign of ingenuity and independence.
Ruffilla is remembered as a woman of great kindness and generosity. The oldest people in the village, who knew her as children, still speak of her with affection. She could read, write and manage accounts, and she administered the family properties, farms and sharecroppers with competence and care, combining firmness with humanity.
1903.
At the age of twenty-one, Ruffilla married Sisto Vannini, with whom she had six children. He too was a landowner, and it is said that he liked to boast that he could reach the church walking only across his own fields.
An honest and upright man, deeply devoted to family and work, he was known for being generous and fair with the sharecroppers.
The relationship between him and Ruffilla was respectful and equal, as shown by some beautiful handwritten letters found years later in a drawer, which Sisto sent to her from the front during the World War I.
During the World War II the house found itself at the centre of events and became a German outpost along the Gothic Line.
One grandson, now in his eighties, remembers the officers carefully counting the windows, inside and outside, trying to understand how many rooms the house had. They never discovered the one where food supplies had been hidden behind a wall.Even the underground channel that carried water to the mill wheel proved vital: during the roundups it offered refuge and safety to many young men.
1950.
With the construction of the Greglio aqueduct, the stream that fed the mill reservoir – the bottaccio – was diverted. After more than two centuries of activity, the mill wheel finally stopped turning.
The family chose not to convert the mill to electricity and instead devoted themselves, alongside farming, to beekeeping.
The honey they produced was so appreciated that people came especially from Bologna and Florence to buy it, and even today those who tasted it still remember its quality.
2018.
Until a few years ago, this house was still home to Alfonsina, our great-aunt and the last daughter of Ruffilla and Sisto. She lived here until the age of 97.
Within these walls, time, stories and family ties have layered over one another. Photographs, letters and memories are still kept in drawers, wardrobes and in the attic. A house that has never left the family and that, across generations, has continued to be cared for, lived in and loved.
