The first traces of humans in the Apennine territories of Romagna date back over 40,000 years. Artifacts found in organized or occasional excavations tell us more about those ancient or very ancient ancestors. They testify, for example, that in Verucchio, starting from the 9th century BC, a center developed that left extraordinary traces; that during the Umbrian-Etruscan period, the city of Mevanìola and the pre-Roman settlement of Sarsina developed; finally, that the Roman conquest of the Apennine territory of Romagna began from below, with the founding (268 BC) at the mouth of the Marecchia of a Latin law colony called Ariminium, the current Rimini. With the Roman conquest, the already existing cities increased in importance, and in the countryside, the industrious life of the fields was organized.
But in the late Roman period, life tended to concentrate in the main centers (Ravenna, Sarsina, Mevanìola), and smaller settlement structures began their decline. The barbarian invasions (535-568) caused a significant demographic regression in the following years, with people tending to seek refuge in the high places of the Apennines, and the first parish churches were established. In the territories around them, the feudal structure began to take shape, along with the first plebeian-castral settlements.
Especially after the year 1000, the high Apennines hosted the birth of monastic centers of great political and moral significance, which would give an indelible identity to these places. The Roman pilgrims traveling from the Po Valley to Rome, and the exchanges and trades induced by the economic and social awakening of the 12th and 13th centuries, traced a route along which shelters for travelers and new settlements arose, eventually replacing the plebeian-castral and monastic ones. The 12th-14th centuries were marked by fierce feudal struggles among local lords, with the Guidi (in the higher mountainous areas) and the Malatesta (in the Cesena and Rimini hill areas) prevailing, along with the temporal power of the popes through the Papal States.
A power that soon, thanks to the skillful penetration policy of the Florentine Republic, which succeeded where the aggressive intemperance of the feudal lords could not, was opposed to that of Romagna Toscana. From the second half of the 14th century until the early decades of the 15th, the Florentines held firm power in high Romagna, conducted with a light hand and great balance, through vicariates and podesteries governed by representatives sent directly from Florence. And while in the Papal States the feudal privileges remained alive, entrusting this or that friendly Lord with the fortresses and castles with the relative territory, Florence governed with the charm and weight of a civilization where art, architecture, and thought dominated for their high level. Romagna Toscana was enriched with palaces, bridges, and connecting roads.
Romagna Toscana and the Papal States would shape borders that would last until the Unification of Italy. Only in 1923, at the initiative of Benito Mussolini, would a part of Romagna Toscana merge into the province of Forlì.
Two architectural styles are fundamentally identified in high Romagna: the simpler, poorer, and more essential style of the Romagnol peasant culture and the more elegant and refined style of Romagna Toscana.
The testimony of an uninterrupted peasant civilization has kept intact, over the years, the structure of old rural houses, built of stone and brick, without plaster, inside which the large room with the wide hearth, raised against the wall by two bricks from the floor, with its vast smoky hood, dominates.
Houses always located on a slope to allow water to flow. Facing north, inevitably, there is the threshing floor: a workplace, on beaten earth, made of temporary things, almost never masonry, surrounded by hedges and fruit trees. Here, threshing is done, corn is husked, domestic animals roam, wood is prepared for the hearth, and agricultural carts are parked.
The rural complex is, in fact, the fulcrum of the farm. Each of its components serves a specific purpose in the farm economy. A convenient shelter for people, a shelter for animals, a place for processing field products.
More typical of manor houses and palaces inserted in an urban context strongly influenced by Florentine domination is, instead, the Tuscan style. These are more graceful houses, embellished with arches, turrets, friezes, wrought iron balconies, and coats of arms on the facades. Florentine architecture is evident in the humpback bridges (Portico, Bocconi, Premilcuore, Modigliana); in the governor’s palaces (Bagno di Romagna, Terra del Sole) adorned with dozens of sandstone coats of arms, a common feature in the towns where Florence sent the captains of the people or podestà; in the palaces and streets of Modigliana; in the intact center of Portico, with its noble palaces; in the coats of arms, ornamental motifs, and architraves of the entrances of the houses of Rocca S. Casciano.
However, it is Terra del Sole that is the most beautiful expression of this culture, with its wide squares, with the slender and elegant Medici palaces, designed by the best architects of the time: Baldassarre Lanci, his son Marino, Camerini, Genga, Buontaletti. In the union between the two styles lies the soul of the territories of high Romagna: the harshness of the places and the roughness of the Romagnol character, meeting with the gentleness and art of Florence, have given rise to Romagna-Toscana.
“There is no Romagnol dialect,” said Friedrich Schürr, a famous Austrian glottologist who had passionately studied the Romagnol dialect, “but an infinity of Romagnol speeches descending from place to place, like continuous variations on a common background.” In fact, Romagnol constitutes a very broad lexical heritage, attributable to a geographical area that has formed among various influences, invasions, disputes, and exacerbated parochialisms.
So much so that the comparison can turn into a multifaceted game of the different on a common root.
And here are some of these variations. In much of the Apennines, burdèl is used for child, boy; in the Ravenna area, the term becomes tabàc. Finally, who does not know the typical Fellinian amarcord (I remember), well in Lugo the expression am arcurd is found, very similar to a m’arcurd in the Sarsina area.
But there are fundamentally two influences that can be read, despite the diversity of expressions: the Tuscan and the Gallic (the dialect of the plain is quite close to French sounds). A speech rich in consonants, where vowels sometimes appear only as necessary to make words pronounceable (scièn for cristiano, sgnòr for signore), Romagnol owes this characteristic to Gallic colonization, which, as early as the end of the 5th century BC, contributed to creating a substantially homogeneous linguistic base in Romagna.
Another prominent element of Romagnol, also of clear Gallic origin, is the strong accentuation that truncates final vowels (parsòt for prosciutto, candlòt for candelotto, piat for piatto).
Gallicisms are also certain nasal sounds like vén for vino, pèn for pane.
Equally recognizable are the typical Tuscan contributions from the border areas: quattre (four) instead of the more typical Romagnol quatar, but also ferme (still) instead of ferum. Or, again, the expression still used in S. Piero, somm al bòrg, is found in the documents of the Captaincy of Bagno in the Tuscan form sommo il borgo. Another example of a Tuscanizing dialectal form typical of the Savio valley up to the Apennine ridge is the use of u instead of the subject: u pienz, u andarà for piange and andrà.
Apart from these differences, it should be noted that the dialect has had typical expressive forms, such as zirudeli, songs, and nursery rhymes that have constituted a true expressive genre. The vigor and salacity of certain sayings, sometimes too blunt for a susceptible ear, nonetheless make the dialect a fundamental component of that jovial and open character that is the recognized characteristic of “Romagnolity.”
