During the end of the XII century, the Pope Innocenzo II, appalled by the ignoble faith of the many babies who, being born by the incest of noble men and their concubine, were vilely abandoned, emanated a department dedicated to these unlucky ‘waifs’. Calling it department might have sounded a bit overwhelming. Indeed, it was simply a tiny building managed by a few nuns where, through the use of a wooden wheel divided in two parts that were separated one from another by a window, the baby was given to the humble church ladies. The system was named ‘Rota Proietti’ (from the latin ‘proiectus’ that means ‘thrown’, the world that originated the surname Proietti) and it was formed by this circular device, where the ‘exposed’ was placed. By rotating ‘la rota’ (the wheel), the baby was then moved inside the building and, by ringing the bell hang outside, the woman was giving the signal to the nuns. The letters were looking after the infants by naming them and recording their name at the Town Hall. Before being filed, the ‘trovatelli’ were describe based on their physical peculiarities, so that they could be recognised, and sometimes, in absence of distinctive characteristics, they were left with bites and small scars on their fragile bodies.
Despite their sexuality, many of them were also recorded as female to escape the brutal faith of the war, and that created quite a few surprises in a society where wedding were often arranged exclusively by the families of the future spouses.
‘La rota’ that was built in Vieste to help these ‘trovatelli’, who were called with the dialect world ‘i scittatid’, is exactly below this room, right next to the mill visible from the small balcony.