The Fontemaggio Mansion has a long and extensive history whose earliest established records date back to the 1500s, but there is evidence that it was probably already inhabited during the Middle Ages.
During these centuries, it was a common practice to connect, through secret underground passages, the dwellings outside the fortress with the interior of the castle. These tunnels were used both as a place to store food and drink during winter and peacetime, and as secret passages for those seeking refuge inside the castle in case of danger. Some of these passages were found during the restoration and renovation of the Fontemaggio Mansion.

The most historically important period, however, was certainly between 1700 and 1800.
The property was already registered at the Gregorian Land Registry in 1813, recorded under number 1082 and described as a “rented house” (now “second house”) owned by Antonio Barbizzi, son of Angelo.

According to the memoirs of Artemisia Travaglini, an elementary school teacher in Cossignano for half a century, the Barbizzi family was so wealthy that they were able to provide a kind of shelter, “the Loggia dei Poveri.” The loggia was an open space to the outside (two arches can still be seen in the northeast wall of the house today) in which shelter from the rain, a plank for lying down and a loaf of bread with which to feed were left for destitute vagrants.
The tradition of hospitality remained so deeply rooted in the history of Dimora Fontemaggio, that the next owner (between 1800 and 1900), Don Guerino Capriotti, expressed the desire to leave that house available “to wayfarers, like a sea port, to which each could freely land.”
The house, recently restored, maintains with its current destination, the centuries-old tradition of accogluenza and hospitality.