#montefoscoli

Tempio di Minerva Medica, Montefoscoli, Italy - designed by Ridolfo Castinelli in 1823 for Dr. Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri.

The sign by the side of the road is crudely handwritten, the word ‘Tempio’ and an arrow in reddish-brown on a roughly carved piece of wood. There are rumours about this place and the man who built it, Dr. Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri. Dark mysteries have been in circulation for more than 180 years. The temple, dedicated to his father and to the goddess Minerva, was designed in 1823 by a young architect, Ridolfo Castinelli. It is an austere neo-classical structure, a portico with eight ionic columns and a primary volume that is resolved as an apse or exhedra giving the building a specific orientation and address. It is built in brick.

Two years before the start of the French Revolution, Andrea with one of his brothers was sent to school in Paris. He was an impressionable 15 year old, and embraced the Enlightenment. Over the next fifteen years he would travel to London, participate in the Revolutionary wars on the French side, study medicine in Paris and become a Professor of Surgery at the University of Pisa. His scientific work was discussed vigorously. The Vaccà name was invoked by Lord Byron as one of the most significant in the field of advanced medicine. Andrea was his friend and a notable raconteur. Byron’s Pisan circle included artists, poets and scientists, among them the Shelleys and his personal physician, John William Polidori, author of ‘The Vampyre’ published in 1819. In early nineteenth century Pisa the scientific revolution and romanticism overlapped productively.