Exclusive visit to the Rocchetta Mattei Castle

Rocchetta Mattei Grizzana Morandi is a fairy-tale castle, famous for the combination of different styles, including a labyrinth of interconnected rooms, courtyards, arches, painted vaults and towers that recall different styles, from the Neo-medieval to the Moorish to the Liberty.

Designed and built in the nineteenth century, it stands on the ruins of the ancient Rocca di Savignano on the Bolognese Apennines and presents decorative references to buildings such as the Alhambra in Granada, for the Courtyard of the Lions, and the Great Mosque of Cordoba.

Its architecture is closely connected with the fascinating history of Count Cesare Mattei (1809-1896), a self-taught renaissance man who studied literature, politics and medicine. He chose this place with the specific intent of making it his fortress as the cradle of the practice that takes the name of “electro homeopathy”, an alternative medicine that made him famous in the world and that is still practiced in some countries such as India and the Pakistan. The extracts from medicinal plants were processed with a secret methodology, which gave the simple elements their therapeutic efficacy. Among his patients were famous personalities such as Tsar Alexander II and Ludwig III of Bavaria.

The Count had become so well known that he was also mentioned by Dostoeveskji in his novel “The Karamazov Brothers”, in which the devil tells of being able to heal from terrible rheumatism thanks to a book and to the drops of Count Mattei.

Today the Rocchetta turns out to be the first and only museum on electro-homeopathic medicine in the world and, through the agreement between the Metropolitan City and the Unione Comuni Apennino Bolognese, the museum reopened to the public in the summer of 2015 and is completely accessible due to the presence of lifts that allow everyone to visit.