Compiano's a medioeval walled town in the Taro Valley (parmesan Appeninis), 50 minute-drive to ligurian sea-side and to Parma. On the top of Compiano's hill stands an old magnificent castle that's now used as a hotel, needless to say it offers an enchanting view on the sorrouding hills and mountains. Taro and Ceno valley, still pretty wild, are famous for their mushrooms. I was said the Grimaldis, the Royal Family of Montecarlo, have their roots right here. A marble plate hung on the castle wall reports all the royal families that have inhabited the castle since the year 800 A.D.
Between the 16th and the 17th centuries Compiano was in its prime, and minted its own currency, opened state schools and started a pawn system.
In the 18th century Compiano passed from the Farnese to the Borbone Family, and was then annexed to the realm of Maria Luigia of Austria, then Duchess of Parma, who used the castle as a State prison for Carbonari captives in 1821.
Built on a rocky spur which dominates the river Taro, the castle is similar to a projection from the surrounding fortified walls, which had been erected to defend the burgh..
Compiano takes its name from the large campo piano or campo plano (flat field) of a prehistoric lake that had once covered the entire Taro valley.
From 1578 to 1682: the Landis principality consists solely of the two jurisdictions of Bardi and Compiano, the only example of an institutional territorial state in Italy, the life of which, however, is crystallized on foundations antiquated by the imperial protection.
But by 1630: the year of the Manzonian plague, the golden era of the State of Bardi and Compiano has already ended, with the handing over of power from Federico Landi, who had no male heirs, to his daughter Polissena and her husband Gian Andrea, of the Doria family from Genoa.
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