THE CASTLE
Nowadays only few ruins are left out of the walls of the great castle which the feud areas were linked to by visual signals, up to
the borderlines of the Reggiano land in the lands of Taro and Samoggia rivers.
To the southbound wall there is a part of the apse under which the high security prisons were supposed to be.
Maybe the ancient stores of the castle nowadays are ruins. Those once had a strategic importance because they were good to ensure
enough provisions in war or occupation periods.
The castle seems it was defended by three levels of walls and that the towers were placed as to transmit and receive signals from a length of over fifty (50) km.
The entry doors were three or four.
Within the first circle of walls at the slopes of the hill there was the village.
The second circle that surrounded the whole cliff from the East side to the West side was to defend the houses of the
servants of the Castle and of the Soldiers' quarter.
The latter was then joined to the third circle of walls on the top of the cliff where the residential part of the castle was, in which
there was the wood burning oven, the stores, the lodgements and the tanks.
The defense was stronger on the northern side, since it was the most subjected to attacks from the plain area.
Inside the circle of walls there was the church of Saint Apollonio, where Enrico the 4th submitted with his bare feet in the snow
in front of Gregorio the 7th.
During the ages the original fortified building has several assaults that destroied the prime structure. In the 16th century
the fortress was built up again and inhabited by noble families. Nowadays the walls visible are dated back to the late Middle Age (year 1300).
Some recent ruins are witness of recent settlements and give value to the hypothesis of a presence of more ancient civilizations upon the hill.
More recent research brought to light some pieces of foundations and significant finds of the church
and of the monastery of Saint Apollonio that laid on the southern and eastern sides of the cliff. Besides of the finds of the monastery of the
castle there remain even some fragments of the walls of the palace that was built up by the Ruggireis. The Pota-Tower of which you can still
recognize the base perimetral ring laid on the southern side of the building and shared the residential area from the religious one.
Beneath the eastern tower, whose body ruins are still standing, maybe there was an entry to the monastery.
On the western side, where some ruins of a drawbridge appeared at the end of 19th century, there was the main entry to the Palace.
On the northern side there was the entry to the donjon. The whole perimetral ring of the walls was almost entirely runnable so to be constantly
seen from the curtains and from the upper perimetral towers.

THE "Da Canossa" FAMILY
The family that would take the name of "Da Canossa" was Longobardian and came from Lucca. The ancestor Sigifredo achieved a
wide property in Villinianum, between Parma and Reggio.
His son Atto - Adalberto or Attone - a man of great personality and political capability made the rule of the family more and more
central by means of rich achievements, careful swaps and precious alliances.
In 940 After-Christ he let the works started for Canossa rock with the attached Saint Apollonio monastery, the craddle of the
great dinasty. In the month of august 951 the Queen Adelaide, after been imprisoned by the king Berengario the 2nd,
she escaped and found shelter in Reggio Emilia where she was protected by Atto-Adalberto.
Berengario the 2nd uselessly besieged the Canossa rock but by the arrival of Ottone the 1st he beated a retreat.
The action ended with the marriage between Adelaide and the Emperor and a significant alliance between the latter and Atto-Adalberto,
who then extends the committee power up to Modena nad Mantova areas.
After his death in 988 his son tedaldo attached the counties of Brescia and Ferrara thus naming his son Bonifacio as his heir.
As he is able and with no scruples he soon acquaintances a main position within the Italian policy of the early 1st Millenium.
As he is very linked to the Emperor Corrado the 2nd he obtains the important government in the Tuscia area.
As his second marriage he marries Beatrice di Lorena, from a royal family, coming from one of the richest and most important feudal families from Flandres, thus achieving
the absolute record of the Italian Imperial Party. After his death occurred during an outrage in Mantova area the 6th of May of 1052 he left an heir for the richness of the
Canossa, the little Matilde.