DA REALE CACCIA AD AZIENDA AGRICOLA. PER LA STORIA DI TORCINO E MASTRATI TRA OTTO E NOVECENTO

«Natural and very fertile (...), the estate is lapped and bordered on three sides by the Volturno river, and barred, at the top, by the mountains with centuries-old trees (...), located a short distance from Naples and Caserta, on the edge of the great roads that from the Wolise and Sannio lead to the Campana plain, and of the rail and rolling roads connecting Naples and Rome». So was described, in the middle of the last century, the Torcino and Mastrati estate, two ancient fiefdoms acquired and gradually unified by Bourbon during the 18th century to make it one of the most prized hunting grounds in Terra di Lavoro; personally acquired by the king Victor Emmanuel II in the 1870s, the site would be taken over at the end of the century by the Pignatelli di Strongoli family to gradually lose its original function. Through a rich bibliographic and archival documentation, some of which unpublished, this contribution aims to increase the little-known events that led to the conversion of the Bourbon site into a modern farm, crossing the delicate phase of the post-war Agrarian Reform and the consequent fractionation of the property, today deeply transformed.