Rocchetta Mattei, Bologna, Italy: This is the world's weirdest castle

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This was published 6 years ago

Rocchetta Mattei, Bologna, Italy: This is the world's weirdest castle

By Brian Johnston
Rocchetta Mattei from across the valley.

Rocchetta Mattei from across the valley.

What do you do if you have oodles of money matched with eccentricity, paranoia that you're going to be murdered, and an unhealthy obsession with your dead mother? Why, build a castle and seclude yourself for 40 years with a jester for company, strange symbols on the ceilings and – because you can – an awaiting tomb built above your dining room.

I've toured many castles, but this is the first to utterly bemuse me. My guide, Alice, has me alternatively shaking my head, restraining giggles and wondering if I'm being pranked.

Rocchetta Mattei is the world's weirdest castle, in which a statue of Snow White, chained to a wall in the owner's bedroom, is the least peculiarity. A tour here is quite the yarn involving electric shocks, architectural fakery and an Italian count who ought to have been confined to a lunatic asylum, but was instead famous across Europe and ennobled by a pope.

A Moorish-inspired room at Rocchetta Mattei.

A Moorish-inspired room at Rocchetta Mattei.

Rocchetta Mattei is wedged in a valley south-east of Bologna on a winding road to Florence, and makes a startling, turreted appearance that reminds me simultaneously of Russian churches (gold domes), Moorish forts (striped walls, arched windows) and an imaginary castle from a Renaissance painting.

"Count Cesare Mattei was a little bit unusual, he wanted to follow his desires, he was eccentric," says Alice with considerable understatement. He started his adult life in politics and founded a bank but after his mother's death withdrew from public life. He invented a homeopathic "cure" for various diseases that purported to realign the body's energy through the electricity contained in herbs and plants. It made him famous. Through sales of a kit with which patients could treat themselves, he also became exceedingly rich.

The count completed his castle in 1859 atop medieval foundations on a rock containing a supposedly lively electromagnetic field. It was the centre of his homeopathic practice, with the deluded and desperate rich and royal coming for cures. He lived there until his death in 1896 and for the last 20 years never left its walls.

Mattei's castle displays all the child-like, unhinged absurdities of his cancer cure. You might imagine the count striding about saying "I want a lion! A hippogriff! A giant electric clock!" – one of only two in its day. And then when he got those, getting ever more demanding: "A minaret! A Turkish room! The Alhambra Towers that recreate the entire solar system!" And he got those, too.

This is a castle of turrets and a drawbridge, winding staircases and battlements, a labyrinth of passageways and rooms. It's discernibly castle-like but everything looks odd, like a drawing from a sci-fi cartoon. Moorish elements are strongest. A chapel resembles the hybrid mosque-cathedral in Cordoba, the Lion Courtyard a scaled-down version of the one at the Alhambra.

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Every architectural feature has symbolism associated with magicians, masons and other assorted madmen. (Mattei never married, and there is no womanly restraint in this ultimate garden shed.) You come in through a narrow entrance that looks like a giant ear, pass between statues of good and evil and into a sun-flooded baptismal courtyard. See, you're already cured!

The count's bedroom has a ceiling knobbly with downward pointing pyramids, one of which supposedly conceals a fabulous life-prolonging diamond.

The Hall of Nineties was created to celebrate Mattei's 90th birthday with 90 guests. Instead, he carked it at 87 and was bundled into his tomb, covered with astrological signs and messages whose meanings have yet to be deciphered. Some think they point to hidden treasure, but when the tomb was recently opened it contained just a skeleton. Grinning, one presumes, at having got away with such a grandiose, ludicrous prank.

TRIP NOTES

MORE

traveller.com.au/italy

bolognawelcome.com

FLY

Emirates flies from Sydney and Melbourne to Dubai (14.5 hours) with onward connections to Bologna (6.5 hours). Phone 1300 303 777, see emirates.com/au

TOUR

Rocchetta Mattei is 45 kilometres from Bologna and open Saturday and Sunday. Entrance is €10, free on the first Sunday of the month. See rocchettamattei-riola.it

STAY

In Bologna, Hotel Metropolitan is a stylish, contemporary hotel tucked down an alley. Its sleek rooms have glimpses over the old town, and the rooftop terrace is a great spot for sunset cocktails. See hotelmetropolitan.com

Brian Johnston travelled courtesy of the Italian State Tourist Board and Emilia-Romagna Tourism.

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