Almost nine centuries of history between the Secchia valley and the ridges of the Reggio Emilia Apennines: parish churches, stonemasons, pilgrim ways and oak woods.
Nine hundred years of written records and many millennia of inhabited mountain: a ridge road, a hospice for travellers, a magistracy named after the village, a dynasty of stone carvers, a brass band and a truffle festival. This is the history of Cavola, told in full.
Nine hundred years of written records and many millennia of inhabited mountain: a ridge road, a hospice for travellers, a magistracy named after the village, a dynasty of stone carvers, a brass band and a truffle festival. This is the history of Cavola, told in full.
Scroll to travel through time
Cavola lies at about 500 metres above sea level, on the sunny side of the Secchia valley, 6.5 kilometres north-west of Toano. The village territory drops to 375 metres on the valley floor and climbs to 612 at the last houses: wide meadows, oak woods and, a little further on, the point where the Dolo flows into the Secchia at Cerredolo. This is middle-altitude mountain country, with a temperate climate, winters that can still bring snow, summers touching thirty degrees and around 500 millimetres of rain a year, concentrated in spring and autumn.
The mountain was inhabited long before the documents. Archaeologists have found traces of settlements and stone tools some seven thousand years old, from the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic; in 1872 two flint arrowheads were reported near Cervarolo, along with a Gaulish-type fibula near Villa Minozzo. In 1971, during roadworks, the Roman necropolis known as della Gatta or San Bartolomeo came to light: some fifty graves with small grave goods, spread over nearly a thousand square metres and dated between AD 77 and AD 138.
Not far away, at Quara, the salt springs the Romans knew still flow: the place name Aquaria appears in documents from the first half of the eleventh century, and in 1708 the naturalist Antonio Vallisneri recognised there the remains of a small pagan temple, probably dedicated to a water deity. One of the springs still runs at a constant 24.4 degrees. This is the landscape that explains Cavola: water, sandstone and ridge roads.
In the oldest documents the village is called Cavella, Cavela and, in the fourteenth century, Pons de Cavella: the bridge of Cavella. The Latin form survives until the statutes of 1461, issued for the magistracy Toani et Cavlae.
Studies of the place names of the Reggio area derive the name from the Mediterranean root *gaba / *gava, "torrent, spring water forming a stream", with the Ligurian suffix -el-: not a hollow, then, but water. The same root appears in Gavassa, Gavasseto and in Gabellus, the ancient name of the river Secchia.
Gabriele Fabbrici, "Ricerche sui Celti e i loro toponimi a Brescello e nel Reggiano".
Every date rests on a document, an excavation or an object that can still be seen: an imperial diploma, a tax register, a marquis' decree, a bass drum with the year burned into it.
Prehistory and Roman times
Recent research shows that the mountain hosted human groups as early as the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic: traces of settlements and stone tools some seven thousand years old. Ancient historians called the peoples of these valleys, in general terms, Ligurians.
Two flint arrowheads are reported near Cervarolo and a Gaulish-type fibula near Villa Minozzo: the first material clues of a very ancient human presence along these ridges.
In 1971, during roadworks, a Roman necropolis came to light, known as della Gatta or San Bartolomeo. Over nearly a thousand square metres the Civic Museums of Reggio Emilia recorded some fifty graves in reasonable condition, with small grave goods, datable between AD 77 and AD 138.
Close by, the thermal springs of Quara attracted Roman interest: the place name Aquaria appears in documents from the first half of the eleventh century, the therapeutic use of the water is well documented from the mid-fifteenth century, and in 1708 Antonio Vallisneri recognised there the remains of a small pagan temple.
10th-14th centuries
A diploma of Emperor Berengar I mentions the "court of Toano" for the first time: it is the oldest document naming the territory to which Cavola belongs.
A diploma of Emperor Otto II documents the existence of the parish church of Santa Maria in Castello on the hill of Toano: it is the first official act to name it, and nobody knows how long it had already stood. For the scholar Alcide Spaggiari it is "the perfect, complete and intact monument of Canossa art in the Apennines".
The hill of Toano, still called Castello, carried on its summit a castle already standing shortly after the year 1000, in the time of Boniface of Canossa, Matilda's father; the parish church included, the whole site was ringed by stout walls. Along it ran the road that from the rock of Canossa, through Marola and Carpineti, descended to the baths of Quara and climbed again towards Romanoro and the via Bibulca, the pass into Tuscany.
Two documents mention the hospice of Cavella: this is the village's first appearance in written history. It was not a hospital in today's sense but a shelter for pilgrims and travellers crossing the ridges, on the road leading to the hospice of San Giacomo.
According to tradition the earliest church stood in the place still called "chiesa vecchia", the old church: it was dedicated to Saint Roch and is said to have been consecrated by Bishop Alberio. A landslide damaged it and forced its abandonment.
A church is recorded as active on the site of today's parish church of Saint Michael the Archangel. The building we see preserves a carved stone portal with festoons and a shell, and a sandstone oculus bearing a sun motif.
The villa of Cavella appears, with eighty-eight men, in the oath of loyalty to the Commune of Reggio Emilia, together with the other mountain communities: the first measure of its size.
Cavola appears in the Reggio tax register as a commune, together with Cerrè Marabino and Manno: three villages that paid and decided together.
The chapel dedicated to Saint Michael inside the castle enclosure is recorded, replacing the old church damaged by the landslide. The warrior saint, protector of high places, would remain the village's patron.
From the Este to the modern age
The "homini" of Toano, Minozzo and Cavola gave themselves up to Marquis Niccolo III d'Este, the new lord of Reggio, without a sword being drawn. His commissioners had offered the heads of households exemption from tolls and duties, privileges, the income of the Raigara mill on the Dolo and the right to govern themselves: the people of Toano accepted, and shortly afterwards those of Cavola did the same.
The marquis established a single magistracy for the two territories and gave it a statute. The decree enacting the Statuta Podestariae Toani et Cavlae is dated Ferrara, 1 April 1461. The manuscript was found by the historian Monsignor Ferdinando Milani in the parish archive of Corneto: from then on Cavola gave its name, together with Toano, to the whole district.
The first records of the oratory date from this year: built in sandstone, with a carved portal and a fine stone rose window. Inside it keeps the majestic inlaid wooden altar by Francesco Domenico Ceccati.
Pastoral visitations describe the church of Cavola, dependent on the parish church of Toano, as being in disastrous condition: a reminder of how hard economic life was in these mountain communities.
From nearby Stiano worked the Ceccati family, stonecutters, wood carvers and sculptors who signed portals, altars, baptismal fonts and bell towers all over the Apennines between Reggio and Modena. In Cavola they left the wooden altar of the oratory, by Francesco Domenico, and the baptistery of the parish church.
Once a villa subject to the Fogliani family and later under Este rule, Cavola was granted as a fief to the Testi counts and afterwards to the Dalli-Favali: the village changed lords but not its habits.
The manor court type spread: the tower house acquired service buildings set in an arc, with a walled courtyard in the middle and a wide opening for carts. In Cavola one example survives in Corte Baroni, with the family coat of arms inserted in stone.
Unification, labour, war
The Napoleonic age swept away the system of magistracies and drew the modern municipalities: Toano became the municipality of which Cavola is the largest hamlet, and so it has remained.
In the new unified state the leading figure of the municipality was Antonio Baroni, mayor in 1866 and again from 1869 to 1883. These were the years of the grist tax, which fell unfairly on the poor, and at the same time of the opening of the first public primary schools and post offices.
Nineteen villagers began to study music and instruments under maestro Giuseppe Pignedoli of Felina. The date is still burned into the oldest bass drum of the first band: the birth certificate of a band that, through wars and hard times, has never really stopped playing.
For the Timber Committee of Modena and Reggio, a Decauville railway was built from Quara di Toano up into the high Val d'Asta: sixteen kilometres of narrow gauge with a gradient under 3 per cent, an 1,800-metre cableway and a labour camp for Austro-Hungarian prisoners, the only one in the province. It carried timber down for the war industry, and was dismantled around 1920.
From 17 June to 30 July 1944 the mountains around Cavola formed part of the free zone of Montefiorino: four municipalities in the Modena area and three in the Reggio area, Toano included, taken out of Nazi-Fascist control. On 12 October, at Manno di Toano, eleven partisans were hanged in reprisal.
At dawn on Easter Sunday German units infiltrated the Toano area and reached the ridge of Monte della Castagna. Above Cerrè Marabino they intercepted and shot the partisan courier Nadia, Valentina Guidetti, and the brothers Giacomo and Leonildo Bini. Twenty-four days later the war was over.
From 1988 onwards
The Pro Loco organised the first truffle festival in the province of Reggio Emilia, to make known a product long sought here among oaks, poplars, willows and limes. Since then Cavola has been "the little Alba of Reggio" and the festival has grown into the November event of the whole mountain area.
The band celebrated its centenary with nineteen players, as in 1898. After a short pause it started again in 2000 under maestro Lino Costi, continued with Valerio Volpi and, since 2016, with Massimiliano Montanari, alongside some thirty pupils of the music orientation course.
The Pro Loco holds the first Prugnolo Mushroom Festival, devoted to the fragrant mushroom that grows in spring in the Apennine meadows.
The Pro Loco di Cavola receives the "Sagra di qualità" (quality festival) award from UMPLI, the national union of Italian Pro Loco associations.
Cavola has a population of around 1,000 and boasts new schools as well as the CavolaForum, the town's community hub. A historic fair used to take place here on the last Sunday of May; although it is no longer held, it gave rise to the Truffle Festival and the St. George's Mushroom Festival (*Sagra del Fungo Prugnolo*), which takes place on the first Sunday of May. The *Via Matildica del Volto Santo* also passes through here, connecting Mantua to Lucca along the same ridgelines followed by the 1148 *hospitale* (pilgrim shelter).
The stone carvers who sculpted half the Apennines, the rock that decided how the houses are built, and the community that gathers around a fair every year.
In the hamlet of Stiano, among oak and chestnut woods, stands the Casa dei Ceccati: long believed to be a tower house, it was identified by the architect Giuliano Cervi as an Apennine medieval fortified house of the 14th to early 15th century. From here, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, came a family of wood and stone artists who worked throughout the Duchy of Modena and Reggio.
Antonio Ceccati designed and carved the bell tower of San Martino at Corneto, built between 1668 and 1676, with the columns, pillars and arches of the belfry; the church portal and the supports of the Rosary altar are also his. Francesco Domenico signed the inlaid wooden altar of the oratory of Our Lady of the Snow in Cavola. The family is also credited with the baptistery and the old sacristy furniture of the parish church, and with the portal of Corte Ghirardini at Manno, where Saints Paul and Prosper are carved in sandstone.
Today the "I Ceccati" study centre at Corneto gathers their works and memory, and during the Truffle Festival the walk "Sui passi dei Ceccati" leads from their birthplace to the treasures of Cavola.
The sandstone of these valleys is a docile rock: it can be squared with a hammer and split into slabs. From it come the "piagne" roofing stones, the carved portals, the rose windows, the votive shrines along the roads and the stonecutter's trade itself: after the Hungarian raids the churches of the Apennines were rebuilt by local master builders, masons and stonecutters, in the Romanesque manner.
From the fourteenth century the minor mountain nobility built fortified houses against banditry: walls of squared stones fitting perfectly, tiny windows, no chimneys. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth century came the tower houses, on three floors with a dovecote on top; then the manor courts and the "balchio" houses, with an external stone stair extending into a loggia on monolithic sandstone columns.
The same geology shapes the rest: the badlands of Fora, whose name comes from the pre-Indo-European *kala-, simply "stone, rock", the meadows that in autumn become truffle grounds, and the oak woods where Tuber magnatum finds the moisture it needs.
The historic fair on the last Sunday in May is the oldest date in Cavola's calendar: the day when the village filled with livestock, traders and relatives come down from the hamlets. Alongside it, since 1898, the band has marked feasts and anniversaries; and since 1988 the Pro Loco has added the Truffle Festival, the first in the province.
Today the two Sundays in November bring to the CavolaForum the stalls of truffles, Parmigiano-Reggiano and mushrooms, the mycological exhibition, the market through the village streets and the Pro Loco lunch; in spring the Prugnolo mushroom festival extends the season. For a day, a village of eight hundred people becomes again the village of the old fairs.
It is the same thing the hospice of 1148 and the May fair used to do: give people a reason to stop at Cavola.
This page brings together public sources and local research. If you find a mistake, or have a document, a photograph or a memory to add, write to the Pro Loco: the village's history is written together.
A small heritage of carved stone, kept among the village lanes and the surrounding countryside.
Cavola's parish church, with remarkable stone carving on the portal and side façades, the work of the local stonemasons' tradition.
Foto di Andrea Benelli tratta da www.tourer.it · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
A small oratory that holds a richly carved seventeenth-century wooden altar by Francesco Ceccati. Nearby, the Corte Baroni bears witness to Apennine rural architecture.
Foto di Andrea Benelli tratta da www.tourer.it · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
The multipurpose venue run by the Pro Loco: home to the Truffle Festival lunches, events, sport and initiatives for the whole village.
The tiny village of Cavola is crossed by the "Sentiero Matildico e del Volto Santo", a path running from Mantua to Lucca, once walked by pilgrims from the North on their way to Rome and to the holy places. Cavola is a crossroads of trails, all rewarding and none demanding, which lead to enchanting corners of the Reggio Emilia Apennines: the castle of Carpineti, the beautiful Secchia valley, the splendid Pietra di Bismantova and the fine succession of Apennine peaks — Alpe di Succiso, monte Casarola and the enchanting Cusna.
Following the Sentiero Matildico e del Volto Santo, visitors can discover and admire several artistic treasures of the area. The route begins at the splendid altar of the Oratory of the Madonna della Neve, a Baroque masterpiece by Francesco Domenico Ceccati, and continues with the Ceccati birthplace in the hamlet of Stiano, the Ceccati museum in Corneto and the churches of Corneto and Massa, rich in works of great value by the Ceccati dynasty. It goes on to the thousand-year-old Matildic parish church of Toano and the recent archaeological excavations beside it. The artistic tour ends in the parish church of Cavola, home to a splendid Ceccati baptistery and several other works of artistic value. In the centre of the village stands the fine "Baroni" manor house, with a beautiful stone inset bearing the coat of arms of the Baroni family, now owned by the Scalabrini family.
Cavola is a mountain stage of the Via Matildica del Volto Santo, the pilgrim way that links Mantua to Lucca through the lands of the Great Countess.
The route connects Mantua, the Reggio Emilia Apennines and Lucca. Cavola is a mountain stage for those crossing the area on foot, among parish churches, villages and ridges.
The central figure of this story is the Great Countess Matilda of Canossa: the way evokes the land and the deep legacy of the places tied to her.
The Reggio Emilia stretch of the way passes through Cavola as it climbs the Secchia valley, along the ancient ridgeways of the medieval pilgrims.
From sky to nightfall: six ways to enjoy the village and the Reggio Emilia Apennines at any time of day.
Beyond the festival lunches, the village and its surroundings offer restaurants and trattorias serving mountain cooking: mushrooms, truffles, Parmigiano-Reggiano and the fresh pasta of the Emilian tradition.
Open the list of the nearest places, or ask the Pro Loco for advice: we're biased, but only towards those who cook well.
Find restaurants
The Pro Loco's video tells the story of Cavola among the rooftops, meadows and woods of the Secchia valley.
Historic views of Cavola collected by the Pro Loco.
