Historical Library

Freylino di Buttigliera

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The Freylino archive, originally called "Conti di Pino", was found in the closets of the aulic part of the library and subsequently inventoried by Caterina Testa. It has not been documented so far its origin, which presumably dates back to a donation that took place in the years of the institution's inception, between the late 1950s and the early years of the following decade. It's a set of family archives, where the cards of the Freylino family of Buttigliera and Pino are predominant. The aggregate families are: Appiani, Avogadro, Baronis, Biglione, Buffatto, De Barbieri, Gastaldi, Nadone, Pangella. Some of these families were connected to the Freylino by parental ties (as is the case of the Pangella), others by shares of the fiefs (as in the case of Giuseppe Biglione).
Other documents concern the communities of Buttigliera and Pino d'Asti. Of particular importance is the documentary nucleus of the Freylino family, extended from 1609 to 1819, which includes, in addition to the personal correspondence of the counts, dowries, wills, causes, heritage, and a very particular sector, the papers of the botanist Pietro Lorenzo Freylino, The third Count of Pino, who, in addition to being a well-known naturalist at the time, also tended, at his palace in Buttigliera, a botanical garden of particular importance. In the field that includes the papers of the Biglione family there is a copious fund of letters between 1703 and 1706 between Vittorio Amedeo II and the lawyer Count Giuseppe Biglione, along with eighty letters sent by the protagonists of the siege of Turin to the same count, essential source for the reconstruction, in a strategically important geographical area, the Chierese, of one of the most significant events in the history of Piedmont.

Bibliography: Bruno Signorelli, Tre anni di ferro. From the disarmament of San Benedetto Po to the victory of Turin in 1706 in the correspondence between Vittorio Amedeo II and Count Giuseppe Biglione, Turin, Province of Turin, 2003 (Notebooks of the Library of History and Culture of Piedmont, n. 5).