Cascina a corte

In Italy, the phrase cascina a corte (Italian: [kaʃˈʃiːna a 'korte]; plural: cascine a corte) refers to a type of rural building traditional of the Po Valley, especially of Lombardy and of some areas of Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna.

Also known as cascine lombarde or just cascine, these buildings are reported in the Po Valley at least since the 16th century, even though they became common in the 18th and 19th centuries. In particular, during the Napoleonic period, a number of religious buildings were confiscated and transformed into cascine.

The term cascina is attested ever since the Middle Ages, when it was often spelt capsina, caxina or cassina. The noun seems to be a derivative of Vulgar Latin capsia, meaning "corral", "stockyard" in English, but a common interpretation considers this word as a derivative of Old Italian cascio (Modern Italian cacio), literally cheese, a clear reference to cascine intended as dairy farms.

A typical cascina is a square-yarded farm (sometimes having multiple yards) located at the centre of a large piece of cultivated land. Different types of brick-wall buildings are lined on the perimeter of the courtyard, which typically includes houses (usually a main house for the farm owner's or tenant's family, and simpler buildings for the peasants' families), stables, barns, and fountains, ovens, stores, mills and dairies. As most cascine were isolated, semi-autonomous settlements, with sometimes as much as one hundred inhabitants, many of them included public buildings such as churches, inns, or even schools. For the same reason, cascine were sometimes fortified structures, with defensive walls, towers, moats and drawbridges.

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