The grounds of the farmhouse of the Maranella family are situated between the moat of the Acqua Mariana, the Great Ring Road, and the Capannelle Racecourse with its adjoining old Stables on the southeasten outskirts of Rome. The area, crossed by the Roma - Cassino railway line, covers about forty hectares.
Though within the Ring Road, the place is almost hidden, and little known. But it is one of the last remaining stretches of the Campagna Romana within the limits of the motorway. In recent years, others places in the neighbourhood like the Villaggio Appio and Osteria del Curato have been rapidly expanding.
About fifty years ago, on a bike ride I discovered the Parco degli Acquedotti. My curiosity lured me across the via di Capannelle into a strange picturesque world, of The Old Stables adjoining the Racecourse. Beyond, in the direction of the Ring Road I skirted the moat of the Acqua Mariana to find a large meadow. In the middle of this was a majestic complex of farmhouses and a magnificent view towards the Castelli Romani.
I was struck by the silence broken every now and then by the unexpected roar of aeroplanes taken off from Ciampino. The wide view with the railway seemed to run towards distant horizons. Only recently have I learned the name of the place: Casale della Maranella, the farmhouse of the Maranella family. I have returned on other occasions, intending to learn more about the place and committing myself to safeguarding it.
You can reach these farmhouses in a quite unexpected way, along an avenue of pines, which branches off the Ring Road. If you fancy a walk, after getting permission from the owners, you can skirt the farmhouses and enjoy a romantic avenue of eucalyptus trees, surrounded by meadow.
After a few hundred metres this bends in the direction of the Roma - Cassino railway line. Beyond, there is an underpass, before you reach the fence bounding the Capannelle Racecourse. Returning, from the opposite direction you arrive at the moat of Acqua Mariana and, skirting this, you reach the Old Stables and finally the via di Capannelle.
Along the way, you will be overwhelmed by the scents and colours of the meadow, so precious for townspeople, but shattered every now and then by the roar of aeroplanes and trains, a brutal reminder that we are really close to the city.
Tomassetti helps us to get a better historical knowledge of the place. We discover that this is also called the farmhouse of the Marrana or Bertone from the name of its Piedmontese builder who came down to Rome in 1870 at the time of unification of Italy.
Between the close of the Nineteenth Century and the beginning of the Twentieth it belonged to the Pellizzoni family and in particular to Giovanni Pellizzoni, then from 1919, to his cousin Pellizzoni Sartori. Now it belongs to her descendents.
In the Nineteenth Century the farmhouse formed a part of grounds of about 90 hectares.
The centre piece was the Villa Bertone, a distinctive building of the same period as the farmhouses, then being used as a farmhouse.
Its outstanding feature is an austere, elegant tower, like a bell tower, which can still be seen beyond the ground of the Acqua Mariana.
Today unfortunately Villa Bertone is no longer a patrician country seat, but has been transformed into residences, extrapolated from what is left of the ancient grounds.
Tomassetti tells us how is in the Nineteenth Century through the evidence of tombs we can trace a rural population of the last period of the Roman Empire in the grounds of the Maranella with the remains of a swimming pool of the New Aniene Aqueduct. In the same place various ancient boundary stones have been discovered indicating the course of the Acqua Giulia before it joins the Tepula and the Marcia - and also traces of the Claudian and Aniene Aqueducts.
To the N. E. a few hundred metres away, there passed in Roman times the via Castrimeniense direct from Castrimoenium (the modern Marino), which was in use even in the Middle Ages.
Also, other discoveries made at the Casale Maranella by the Pellizzani family at the end of the Nineteenth Century include a statuette of Diana (?) with dog leaping up behind her, transferred to the Villa Sartori Pellizzoni at Grottaferrata.
Going further back, according to Tomassetti, these grounds were once a holding in the Middle Ages called the "Casale de Marana", property of the church of Santa Maria Nova.
These grounds remained the property of this church until the end of the Nineteenth Century. Around the Sixteenth Century the place-name Casale della Maranella appears.
Today the casale, as Signora Tagliaferri informs us, consists of two separate farmhouses, very similar to each other. One of these, no longer in use, is rapidly deteriorating. The porticos of the two buildings face each other.
The central part of each is higher so the whole form has, as it was, wings.
It is characterised by formal elements like the underlining of string courses and pilasters.
The farmhouse still inhabited has been restructured over the years, with some arches closed and some rectangular apertures created - so varying the compositional rhythm. The group of service buildings has an elongated form. The architectural features of these buildings constitute something unique in the whole panorama of the Campagna Romana.
They reveal Lombard origins emphasized also by bands in two colours of the plaster of the exterior which though faded can still be noticed. We may also note that the owners have created inside the complex a beautiful garden, like a small botanical garden, with a romantic atmosphere.
The whole area is included in the Territorial Landscape Plan, "Park of the Appia Antica and neighbouring zones" (art. 1 lettera "m" lg. n. 431 dell'08/08/1985, località Capannelle - Barbuta).
The Maranella farmhouse appears on the map of the Campagna Romana appended to the New Regulatory Plan.
The moat of the Acqua Mariana, of considerable historic importance, is defined in the Ecological Framework of the plan as a Secondary Component.
We may note that on the edge of the area two ancient aqueducts pass below ground level, the Claudio and the Anio Novus, and near the farmhouse a little beyond the moat there are two connected swimming pools.
