Cascina a corte

'courtyard-provided farmstead'; plural: cascine a corte), or more simply cascina (Lombard: cassina [kaˈsina]; Piedmontese: cassin-a [kaˈsiŋa]),[1] refers to a type of rural building traditional of the Po Valley, northern Italy, especially of Lombardy and of some areas of Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna.

As early as the middle of the thirteenth century, in some areas of Lombardy, as in the countryside of Pavia and Milan, centralized farms had arisen, equipped with boxes, stables, houses, mills and tower defenses.

For example, so-called "campari" were responsible for the maintenance of irrigation structures; "bergamini" looked after the cattle; "casari" worked in the dairy; "bifolchi" were responsible for ox-driven tillage (and "cavallanti" for horse-driven tillage); and "contadini" were factotum peasants, although their main task was that of harvesting hay for cattle feeding.

From an economic point of view, cascine have gone through a gradual but relentless decline throughout the 20th century, basically losing the function they formerly fulfilled in the Po Valley.

As a consequence of their abandon, many of these rural facilities have been demolished or still lie vacant and in decay today, as is the case with several cascine in the outlying areas of some Northern Italian cities.

Two popular movies that accurately depict daily life in a "cascina" are Ermanno Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) and Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 (1976).