Forse che sì, forse che no

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“Forse che sì, forse che no” (Maybe yes, maybe no)
Via Campagna
Piacenza, May 2024

“Regarding our city, some scholars have hypothesized that the epigraph was placed at the time of Napoleon, when on the other side of via San Tomaso there was the large female Monastery of the Holy Spirit, demolished in 1967/68. Cesare Zilocchi writes in the ‘Vocabolarietto di curiosità piacentine’, published by the Banca di Piacenza, that everything arose from a controversy over a balcony between the nuns of a convent located there (from 1615 to 1810). But the common people embroidered their own more salacious version. Behind the walls of the cloister, an unscrupulous abbess organized cheerful parties. The ecclesiastical authority then opened an investigation. Perhaps because they were unfounded slanders, perhaps because excellent names were implicated in the prurient affair, the investigation came to nothing but the curious epigraph still commemorates it. (Forse che sì, forse che no, Il Piacenza Blog)