CONFERENCE DINNER IN SORAGNA ROCK

The Soragna Rocca (fortress), just off the main street in the centre of town, is a square structure with four towers at its corners and one in the centre of the façade, flanked by a wide moat on its south and east sides.
It was built about 1385 by the marquis Bonifacio and Antonio Lupi on licence from Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and is still owned by the noble family of its founders, who, in 1347, were granted feudal privileges over the land, which they governed until Napoleon suppressed the aristocracy.
Transformed into a luxurious princely castle at the end of the 1600s, it was further modified in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Meli Lupi princes who still own it and who have opened the building to public visits.
A stone bridge, built in the 17th century to substitute the draw-bridge of the old fortress, leads into the arcaded courtyard of the Rocca, graced with statues of mythological and allegorical subjects.
On the ground floor is the Salone degli stucchi (hall of stuccoes) with frescoes by Ferdinando and Francesco Galli Bibiena, done in 1696; the grandiose Poets' Gallery, built in 1792, has busts of the great poets and frescoes illustrating their works.

On the upper floor are three interconnecting galleries decorated by the Bibienas illustrating the feats of the Meli Lupi family, and from here we enter the noble apartment consisting of a Throne room, a Gilded parlour and the Alcove, all complete with original furniture from the 1600s and 1700s.
Like every respectable castle, Soragna too has its ghost. She is known as "Donna Cenerina", so named for her ash-blonde hair. Her real name was Cassandra Marinoni, assassinated in 1573 by her brother-in-law Giulio Anguissola in a dispute over money. Legend narrates that the ghost appears every time a member of the Meli Lupi family dies.