What to See in Scandiano, the Emilia Town of Boiardo, Spallanzani and the Ancient Spergola Grape
Scandiano is small enough to cross on foot in less than half an hour, yet it produced two figures who changed completely different parts of European culture.
Matteo Maria Boiardo, born here in 1441, transformed the medieval stories of Charlemagne and Orlando into the imaginative world of the Orlando Innamorato, preparing the ground for Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. Almost three centuries later, Lazzaro Spallanzani used experiments on microorganisms, digestion, reproduction and bats to help establish the methods of modern experimental biology.
Between them stands the Rocca dei Boiardo, an old fortress gradually transformed into a Renaissance and Baroque residence. Around it survive porticoed squares, a curious clock tower with a single hand, traces of a centuries-old Jewish community and a food-and-wine culture firmly rooted in the Reggio Emilia countryside.
Scandiano does not require a long stay.
Its strength is concentration rather than monumentality.
Allow half a day for the historic centre, extending to a full day if you add lunch, the Jewish cemetery, a winery or the nearby Castello di Arceto.
The principal limitation in 2026 is important: the Rocca dei Boiardo is undergoing restoration and museum installation work and is not currently open for ordinary interior visits. It remains the essential monument of Scandiano, but for now much of its story must be read from the exterior, the surrounding squares and the places connected with Boiardo and Spallanzani.
Things to See in Scandiano
- Rocca dei Boiardo
- Piazza Matteo Maria Boiardo
- Church of the Natività della Beata Vergine Maria
- Piazza Spallanzani
- Casa Spallanzani
- Torre Civica dell’Orologio, known as the Campanone
- historic centre and porticoes
- Piazza Fiume and the former Jewish quarter
- Jewish Cemetery
- local Spergola wine
- Castello di Arceto
Rocca dei Boiardo
The Rocca dominates the centre and contains the essential history of Scandiano.
Its origins reach back to the twelfth century, when the Da Fogliano family established a fortified structure protected by walls, moat, drawbridge and defensive towers.
Everything changed in 1423, when Scandiano passed to the Boiardo family.
For the following 137 years, the fortress became increasingly residential. Military architecture remained visible, but courtly spaces, porticoes and decorated apartments transformed the complex into a Renaissance residence.
This is the Scandiano of Matteo Maria Boiardo.
He was born within the Rocca in 1441, grew up within the cultural orbit of the Este court and eventually became one of the most inventive poets of the Italian Renaissance.
The building therefore matters for more than local history.
It is directly connected with the creation of one of the great narrative traditions of Italian literature.
From Fortress to Renaissance Court
The Rocca is particularly interesting because it was never rebuilt completely in one style.
Medieval structures survived beside Renaissance additions and later Baroque transformations.
The internal courtyard retains traces of the defensive castle while arcades and residential spaces reveal the ambitions of a noble court.
After the Boiardo period, the complex passed through the hands of the Thiene, Bentivoglio and Este families.
During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, architect Giovan Battista Aleotti, known as l’Argenta, played an important role in its transformation.
The monumental staircase and the development of the southern façade belong to this later phase.
The result is less visually uniform than a perfectly preserved Renaissance palace.
That is precisely what makes it historically convincing.
Scandiano’s rulers kept adapting the same fortress rather than replacing it.
The Missing Frescoes of Nicolò dell’Abate
One of the Rocca’s greatest artistic treasures is no longer here.
During the sixteenth century, Nicolò dell’Abate decorated the so-called Camerino with frescoes inspired by episodes from Virgil’s Aeneid.
Dell’Abate was one of the major painters of the Emilian Renaissance and later worked in France at Fontainebleau.
The Scandiano frescoes were removed at the end of the eighteenth century and transferred to Modena, where they are now associated with the Galleria Estense collections.
This is one of the most revealing details of the Rocca.
Its importance once went well beyond defensive architecture: the Boiardo residence belonged to the sophisticated artistic world of the Este territories.
The Rocca in 2026
The Rocca is currently closed for restoration.
Work during 2026 is also preparing new museum and cultural spaces intended to give the complex a much stronger public role once the project is completed.
For the moment, do not plan a trip around an interior tour unless a special opening has been announced for your date.
The exterior, Piazza Boiardo and the surrounding historic centre remain freely accessible.
Address: Viale della Rocca, 42019 Scandiano RE
Visitor status in 2026: closed for restoration and museum works
Matteo Maria Boiardo
Boiardo is the reason Scandiano occupies a permanent place in Italian literary history.
Born here in 1441, he belonged to the feudal family that governed the territory under Este authority.
His life moved between Scandiano and the Este court, particularly Ferrara, Modena and Reggio Emilia.
He was not a poet detached from political life.
He administered estates, served the Este rulers and became governor of Modena before holding an important position in Reggio.
At the same time, he translated classical authors and wrote Latin and vernacular poetry.
Then he reinvented Orlando.
Orlando Innamorato
The Orlando Innamorato combined two great medieval traditions that had previously developed largely apart.
From the Carolingian world came Charlemagne, Orlando and the paladins.
From Arthurian romance came magic, enchanted landscapes, wandering knights, love and adventure.
Boiardo fused them.
His Orlando is no longer simply the heroic warrior of medieval epic.
He falls in love.
The object of his obsession is Angelica, and love becomes a force capable of disrupting military duty, reason and heroic identity.
The first two books appeared in 1483.
A third remained unfinished when Boiardo died in 1494.
Ariosto would later take up the same narrative universe in the Orlando Furioso.
Without Boiardo, one of the masterpieces of European Renaissance literature would look very different.
Piazza Matteo Maria Boiardo
The most effective place to understand the old centre is Piazza Matteo Maria Boiardo, immediately in front of the Rocca.
Historically known as Piazza Castellana, it developed around the castle entrance and part of the area once occupied by the defensive moat.
The square creates Scandiano’s strongest architectural composition.
On one side stands the Rocca.
Opposite rises the Church of the Natività della Beata Vergine Maria.
The town’s political and religious centres therefore face one another across the same space.
The square is free to access at all times.
The Church of the Natività
The parish church deserves attention primarily because of its connection with the Boiardo dynasty rather than for an exhaustive tour of its decoration.
It was founded around 1430 by Feltrino Boiardo, the first Count of Scandiano.
Feltrino requested burial here after his death in 1455, and other members of the ruling families followed.
Matteo Maria Boiardo strengthened the church’s institutional importance during the late fifteenth century.
The building suffered serious damage during bombing in 1945 and was subsequently reconstructed.
That history explains its present appearance.
The church is valuable because it completes the Boiardo landscape: fortress, square and dynastic church remain within a few steps of one another.
Admission: free
Piazza Spallanzani
A few minutes away, Piazza Spallanzani shifts attention from literature to science.
The square began assuming its present urban form during the Boiardo period and was substantially developed from 1548 under Giulio Boiardo.
Porticoes frame the space.
At its centre stands the monument to Lazzaro Spallanzani, shown not as a generic local dignitary but in the role that made him famous: experimenter and naturalist.
This is the second essential personality of Scandiano.
Lazzaro Spallanzani
Spallanzani was born in Scandiano in 1729 and became one of the most relentless experimental scientists of the eighteenth century.
His range was extraordinary.
He investigated microorganisms, reproduction, regeneration, blood circulation, respiration, digestion, marine biology, volcanoes and the navigation of bats.
What unifies that apparently chaotic list is method.
Spallanzani repeatedly created controlled experiments to test claims that had previously rested on speculation.
His work against the theory of spontaneous generation was particularly important.
By carefully heating and sealing nutrient liquids, he demonstrated that microorganisms did not simply appear from lifeless matter under the conditions claimed by earlier experimenters.
His work preceded Pasteur by almost a century.
The Scientist Who Experimented on Himself
Spallanzani’s experiments on digestion produced some of the most memorable episodes in eighteenth-century physiology.
To distinguish mechanical crushing from chemical digestion, he placed food inside perforated containers and had animals swallow them.
He also experimented on himself.
In some tests he swallowed small containers holding food, later recovered them and examined what had happened inside the stomach.
He also obtained gastric juice and demonstrated that digestion could occur outside the body.
The conclusion was fundamental:
digestion depended heavily on the chemical action of gastric fluids, not merely on the stomach mechanically grinding food.
Frogs in Waxed Trousers
His experiments on reproduction could be equally unconventional.
To understand fertilisation in amphibians, Spallanzani fitted male frogs with tiny waxed trousers that prevented direct contact between sperm and eggs during mating.
The experiments helped demonstrate that physical contact with seminal fluid was necessary for fertilisation.
He later carried out controlled artificial insemination experiments in mammals.
Some of his theoretical conclusions were wrong — he did not correctly recognise the role of spermatozoa — but his experimental method was exceptionally modern.
The Mystery of the Bats
In 1794, Spallanzani investigated how bats could navigate in complete darkness.
He showed that bats whose eyes were covered could continue flying successfully, while interfering with their hearing caused serious disorientation.
He did not discover ultrasonic echolocation in the modern sense; the necessary technology did not exist.
But his experiments correctly identified that hearing rather than sight was central to bat navigation.
More than a century later, ultrasonic research explained the mechanism.
This is one of the best examples of Spallanzani asking the correct experimental question before science possessed the tools required for the final answer.
Casa Spallanzani
The scientist’s birthplace stands at Piazza della Libertà 6.
Spallanzani lived here for substantial periods and maintained a personal collection of natural-history material.
Six rooms once housed specimens and objects gathered through his scientific work and travels.
The building was declared a national monument in 1939.
Today it contains municipal offices together with the study centres dedicated to Lazzaro Spallanzani and Matteo Maria Boiardo rather than functioning as a conventional continuously open museum.
Its importance is historical rather than spectacular.
For Scandiano, however, the pairing is irresistible:
within the same compact town are the birthplace of a Renaissance poet and the home of one of eighteenth-century Europe’s great experimental naturalists.
Address: Piazza della Libertà 6
The Campanone: A Clock with One Hand and a Balsamic Vinegar Cellar
The Torre Civica dell’Orologio, known locally as the Campanone, is one of the small details in Scandiano that is actually worth seeking out.
Originally it was the principal entrance into the fortified town, built under Feltrino Boiardo in the first half of the fifteenth century.
By 1548 it already carried a clock.
The bell itself has an unusual pedigree: it was blessed by Pope Paul III in 1543.
More curious still is the clock face overlooking Via Magati.
It has only one hand, mounted on a sun-shaped pivot.
And the interior contains something very Emilian: a traditional acetaia managed by the local brotherhood of balsamic vinegar.
Medieval gateway, Renaissance bell, one-handed clock and ageing balsamic vinegar all occupy the same tower.
That is a much better reason to stop than another generic bell-tower description.
The Jewish Scandiano
Scandiano also preserves evidence of a Jewish community whose history stretches back several centuries.
In 1547, Count Giulio Boiardo formally granted land for a Jewish cemetery to Vitale di Leone da Lodi, a banker active in the town.
Jewish families were integrated into the commercial life of the centre, and traces of their presence survive particularly around Piazza Fiume, once occupied by dense buildings known as the Contradelle.
The historical synagogue no longer survives.
The Contradelle were demolished in 1914, radically changing the appearance of the area.
The cemetery survived.
The Jewish Cemetery
The Jewish Cemetery in Via Ludovico Ariosto is one of the more unusual historic sites in a town of Scandiano’s size.
A high wall encloses the rectangular burial ground.
The present enclosure dates from 1915, replacing an earlier hedge boundary.
The cemetery was restored during the late twentieth century with support that included Rita Levi Montalcini, and today remains a focus for Holocaust Remembrance Day and Jewish cultural events.
It is not a tourist attraction with continuous staffed opening.
Visit access is best arranged through local cultural programmes or guided openings.
Address: Via Ludovico Ariosto 21
Spergola: Scandiano’s Other Great Original
Scandiano also has a local story in the vineyard.
Spergola is an old white grape particularly associated with the hills around Scandiano.
Its clusters can develop a smaller lateral wing, explaining descriptions of the bunch as alato — winged.
The grape can produce still, sparkling, bottle-fermented and sweet wines.
Its naturally high freshness makes sparkling versions particularly convincing.
For years, Spergola was confused with Sauvignon.
DNA analysis around 2000 demonstrated that it was genetically distinct, helping restore its independent identity and its place among the recognised varieties used in the Colli di Scandiano e di Canossa area.
This is the local wine to seek out.
Lambrusco is fundamental to the wider Reggio Emilia landscape, but Spergola belongs far more specifically to Scandiano.
What to Eat in Scandiano
Scandiano sits firmly inside the gastronomic world of Reggio Emilia.
The essential foods are therefore regional rather than invented local specialties.
Look for cappelletti in broth, fresh stuffed pasta, Parmigiano Reggiano, cured pork, gnocco fritto, erbazzone and dishes using Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Reggio Emilia.
One genuinely local sweet deserves mention: panetti di castagna, prepared with chestnut flour.
At the table, try Spergola alongside antipasti, Parmigiano Reggiano or lighter pasta dishes.
For richer meat dishes and cured pork, move towards Lambrusco.
Where to Eat in Scandiano
Osteria in Scandiano
Set in Villa Palazzina, a historic residence outside the tight centre, this is the most complete choice for exploring Reggio Emilia cooking with a contemporary edge. Cappelletti in capon broth, fresh pasta, gnocco fritto, cured meats and Traditional Balsamic Vinegar remain connected to the territory rather than becoming decorative references.
Address: Via Palazzina 40, 42019 Scandiano
Telephone: +39 0522 857079
Email: [email protected]
Cuisine: contemporary Reggiana with traditional foundations
Best for: the principal food-focused meal in Scandiano.
Osteria Boiardo 1495
A useful choice at the foot of the Scandiano hills, particularly for travellers who want traditional Emilian flavours in a more modern setting. The kitchen works with local and seasonal ingredients and sits alongside the Boiardo Hotel.
Address: Via Pedemontana 6/A, 42019 Scandiano
Telephone: +39 0522 856872
Email: [email protected]
Cuisine: modern interpretation of Emilian tradition
Best for: dinner combined with an overnight stay.
Ristorante Locanda Al Portone
Its position directly on Piazza Fiume makes this the easiest central choice after walking through the old town. It is particularly practical when the objective is to remain inside Scandiano rather than drive towards the surrounding hills.
Address: Piazza Fiume 11, 42019 Scandiano
Telephone: +39 0522 855985
Cuisine: Italian and Emilian
Best for: lunch or dinner in the historic centre.
Where to Stay
Scandiano does not require an overnight stay for sightseeing alone, but sleeping here makes sense within a wider Reggio Emilia food-and-wine itinerary.
Boiardo Hotel
A contemporary hotel just outside the historic centre, designed around a strong sustainability concept and convenient for travellers with a car.
Address: Via Pedemontana 6, 42019 Scandiano
Telephone: +39 0522 857605
Email: [email protected]
Category: contemporary hotel
Best for: the most complete conventional hotel option in Scandiano.
Pianderna Agriwellness
The alternative is to stay outside town among the first Reggio hills. The agriturismo combines countryside accommodation, restaurant, organic farming and local products, making more sense for a multi-day food itinerary than for a simple overnight stop.
Address: Via Pianderna 9, 42019 Scandiano
Telephone: +39 0522 851191
Category: agriturismo / countryside stay
Best for: landscape, wine and a slower Emilia itinerary.
Castello di Arceto
If you have a car, continue a few kilometres to Arceto, a frazione of Scandiano.
Its castle preserves an especially interesting type of structure: a fortified residence built on an artificial mound created from earth excavated for the surrounding elliptical moat.
The medieval complex was substantially transformed during the eighteenth century by Giambattista de Mari, who reconstructed the entrance tower, replaced the old drawbridge and created a monumental staircase.
Restored sections of the piano nobile can now be seen by advance reservation.
This is a worthwhile addition because it provides something different from the Rocca dei Boiardo rather than another minor church.
Access: by reservation
Information: +39 0522 764258
Email: [email protected]
How Long Do You Need in Scandiano?
Two hours cover the central squares, Rocca exterior, Campanone and Casa Spallanzani.
Half a day allows enough time to understand Boiardo and Spallanzani properly and add the Jewish history.
A full day becomes worthwhile if lunch and Arceto are included.
Until the Rocca reopens, spending more than a full day purely on Scandiano’s monuments is unnecessary.
The town works best as a concentrated cultural stop within a wider itinerary through the Reggio Emilia hills.
A Half-Day Scandiano Itinerary
Begin in Piazza Matteo Maria Boiardo.
Walk around the Rocca and study the surviving mixture of fortress and residence.
Enter the Church of the Natività briefly for the Boiardo connection.
Continue through the historic centre to the Campanone, then Piazza Spallanzani and Casa Spallanzani.
From there walk towards Piazza Fiume, using the former Jewish quarter to introduce the less obvious side of Scandiano’s history.
Finish with lunch.
The entire route is compact and works easily on foot.
Getting to Scandiano
Scandiano lies around 13 kilometres southeast of Reggio Emilia, between the plain and the first hills of the province.
A car is useful but not essential for the town itself.
Local rail services connect Reggio Emilia and Sassuolo, with a station at Scandiano.
Once in the centre, almost everything essential is walkable.
A car becomes much more useful for Arceto, wineries and the surrounding hills.
Is Scandiano Worth Visiting?
Yes, but for specific reasons.
Do not come expecting another Modena, Parma or Reggio Emilia packed with major museums.
Scandiano is interesting because two exceptional intellectual histories intersect within an unusually compact place.
One leads from a Renaissance fortress to Orlando, Angelica and Ariosto.
The other leads from a provincial house to microbiology, digestion, artificial fertilisation and experiments on how bats navigate in darkness.
Add a one-handed Renaissance clock, an old Jewish cemetery and a grape that needed DNA analysis to recover its identity, and the town acquires far more character than its size suggests.
That is enough.
Scandiano does not need invented attractions to justify the detour.
Useful Information
Region: Emilia-Romagna
Province: Reggio Emilia
Distance from Reggio Emilia: approximately 13 km
Main monument: Rocca dei Boiardo
Rocca origins: 12th century
Boiardo rule: 1423–1560
Rocca status in 2026: closed for restoration and museum installation
Major Renaissance artist formerly represented in Rocca: Nicolò dell’Abate
Fresco subject: episodes from the Aeneid
Frescoes now associated with: Galleria Estense, Modena
Matteo Maria Boiardo born: Scandiano, 1441
Major work: Orlando Innamorato
First two books published: 1483
Boiardo died: 1494
Lazzaro Spallanzani born: Scandiano, 1729
Spallanzani died: Pavia, 1799
Principal scientific fields: microbiology, physiology, reproduction, digestion, respiration and animal navigation
Casa Spallanzani: Piazza della Libertà 6
Casa Spallanzani status: historic building and study-centre headquarters rather than conventional museum
Campanone origins: early 15th century
Campanone bell blessed: 1543
Clock peculiarity: one hand and sun-shaped pivot
Campanone interior: traditional balsamic-vinegar acetaia
Jewish Cemetery documented: from 1547
Jewish Cemetery: Via Ludovico Ariosto 21
Principal local grape: Spergola
Spergola identity confirmed genetically: around 2000
Nearby addition: Castello di Arceto
Arceto Castle access: by reservation
Historic centre: walkable
Recommended visit: half day
With lunch and Arceto: full day
Car required for centre: no
