HOUSE OF THE WITCH OR SORCERESS

HISTORICAL NOTES AND DESCRIPTION

You reach the house called Casa della Strega or della Maga along Via Santa Rosa. Like the other houses characterized by the proffered structure, we do not have data that allow us to reconstruct the historical events of the building. The house, now for private use, in the past will certainly have been included in the urban fabric to qualify the noble family that had it built, given the architectural richness of the entire medieval building. In fact, thanks to the comparison of the Morellian method of the architectural style and the set of some details, we can insert the building within a chronological context corresponding to the thirteenth century. The building, corresponding to the architecture of the contemporary Bishop’s House, is characterized by a proffered staircase and by the presence of a column with a capital decorated with geometric motifs, leaning against the wall, at the beginning of the staircase. The balcony of the house is decorated with a notch created by the arrangement of the five peperino buttresses that support it. Beyond the balcony you can see the entrance door to the house, inserted in a round arch with fluted ring nut, which has a keystone medallion in the center of the arch. Inside, is the coat of arms of the Colonna family, with a column inscribed in an oval surrounded by a modeled frame. The profferlo is a term derived from the late Latin proferŭlum, in turn derived from the Greek προφερής, “placed in front”. The structure of the Witch’s house consists of a single-flight staircase that runs along the facade of the building. At the top of the staircase there is a small loggia that precedes the entrance door to the house. Below the staircase there is an arch that encloses the access to the ground floor environment, generally intended as a shop, cellar or, more rarely, a stable. The Profferlo is the characteristic form of external staircase used in the medieval civil architecture of Lazio and especially in the Viterbo area, where it reached truly remarkable artistic forms. Structurally, the profferlo consists of a wide lame arch, built in cantilevered form by means of long ashlars embedded in the wall against which it rests. In some later and larger examples, such as the Mazzatosta building in Viterbo, the balcony is instead supported by corbels and columns. In more recent architecture, the external staircase of this type has remained only in the more modest houses and in unadorned forms. But both in these purely practical and unpretentious manifestations, and in the rich and decorated original ones, it still constitutes perhaps the most picturesquely characteristic element of the old streets of Vitorchiano.

ESSENTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vitorchiano, il passato presente, edition edited by Fiorenzo Mascagna, historical research by Elide Vagnozzi, Stampa Arti Grafiche Artigiane 2005.

Special thanks to Dr. Andrea Presutti for scientific advice and archival photographic material provided on Vitorchiano.