Durazzo (Molinella)

Durazzo was a frazione of Molinella until the early nineteenth century. Today it is a place name for the area where the settlement stood, now part of the hamlet of San Martino in Argine.

Durazzo is older than Molinella itself and in the Middle Ages enjoyed some prosperity and commercial importance.

In 1296 it was attacked and plundered by a group of men from Argenta acting for the Este family.

Durazzo lay on the road linking Argenta, Cavalli, Mezzolara and San Martino in Argine. The first church on record dates to the mid-1500s and was dedicated to Saints Philip and James, but because of constant flooding it fell into ruin around 1600.

In 1620 the brothers Rizzardo and Ugo Pepoli built a new church with a bell tower, 5.5 metres long, 4 metres wide and 7 metres high, again dedicated to Saints Philip and James, north-east of the old one.

Although it stood on higher ground than the previous one, this church too was damaged by frequent floods, so that from 1823 the parish priest Francesco Way could no longer say Mass there. On 19 August 1828 the church was officially declared unfit for worship and abandoned. Durazzo itself was absorbed into the parish of San Martino in Argine. Some time later the building collapsed. Only the bell tower remained, buried about three metres deep in flood debris. It was restored in 1992 by the Circolo amici dei monumenti of Molinella.

Near Durazzo, in an area called La chiavica, there was also an Oratory of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary, used as a place of worship after the church collapsed.

Text: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 · translated from Italian