The farm as a rule consisted of four architecturally different elements: owner-manager's house, which was more elaborately designed and usually taller than other buildings; residential buildings for workers, tenement type, with balconies on the upper floors, where, for example, rice was dried and stored; barns for cows and other livestock and horse stables with hay attics. The latter element can be easily recognized from a distance, due to the unusually, openwork layouts of bricks, thanks to which the hay was aired. The general functioning of this type of enterprise is accurately portrayed in Olmi's Doze for the Sabbots. taking place in 19th-century Lombardy. Today, many of these complexes are inhabited by individual small-farm peasants, others are abandoned. In the eastern part of the plain, in the Ferrara area, where agriculture is most mechanized. the stables and warehouses of the complexes built around the inner courtyards were of enormous proportions.
In central and southern Italy (especially in Campania and Puglia), the more typical type of farm is masseria. It is derived in a straight line from great feudal land properties, and through them from the lands of Roman emperors (latifundia); masseries were characterized by a complicated and massive structure, and were located in remote areas completely isolated from the outside world. They consisted of built close to each other, separate buildings, often extended upwards; sometimes they were surrounded by a ring of tall ones, stone walls with round defensive turrets.
However, there were masseries composed of lower buildings spread over a larger area. The largest of them functioned as self-sufficient villages and included the church, School, clinic and shop, as well as the necessary stables, residential buildings (for farm laborers called braccianti) and all kinds of storehouses. Farmhouses. constituting an independent village in their purest, the least changed form, can be found today on the slopes of the mountains in Sicily. The later counterparts of these large farms are 18th and 19th century workers' villages like San Laucio near Caserta. founded by Ferdinand IV Burbonski at the end of the 18th century for the production of silk and Craspi. built on the Adda River in Lombardy by Critoforo Cres-piego. where cotton was made.
To the most isolated, Italy's quirky and ancient farms are tnilli, which can be found along the coast of Apulia and further inland. Their origin is uncertain: they can come from Crete or North Africa: first appeared in Italy in the period in between 2000 a 1000 the year of p. n. e. and consisted of individual clusters, round chambers. each covered with a conical roof made of overlapping rough stone tiles, topped with a decorative turret. They were built by primitive farming communities, and an abundance of conical roofs (each house has two or three) creates a surreal landscape.
Throughout Italy, you can find more common private farmhouses (the farmhouse), adapted to the materials available in a given area and local customs. Their design is simpler, they often consist of kitchens and sleeping quarters above animal quarters and storage rooms (typical for central and northern Wioch). but just as often, a barn and a house may constitute the two wings of the building, or even separate buildings - this type of farm dominates the slopes of the Apennines throughout the country.