The Legend
At least 400 years old (they appear in a painting by Maffeotti Floriani, 1620), these cantilevered balconies overhanging the river are the only example of such wooden lattices in Trentino.
It is said that behind these shutters lived the harem of a Turkish silk merchant in the years that Rovereto was one of the main silk cities in Europe.
Studies done during the restoration however, show that people’s taste for the exotic and ‘spicy’ distorted the truth. During Venetian domination Turkish families would have lived and worked in this building as skilled craftsmen in silk production. While the men worked the women stayed at home and the watch guards at the bridge would have looked on. At this point, to preserve the women’s honour, the men put up the wooden shutters which allowed the light in but not the prying looks of the guards.