The baglio is a building that contains the courtyard or courtyard. In the Sicilian territory, the baglio (bagghiu, in the local dialect) is a fortified farm with a large courtyard. The fortification of the walls is linked to the need for protection deriving from the phenomenon of banditry The etymology of the word appears uncertain, however it is possible to consider two hypotheses:
• derivation from the late Latin ballium (courtyard surrounded by tall buildings or walls);
• derived from the Arabic bahah (courtyard)
In more recent times, in Sicily, baglio indicates the internal courtyard of the masserie (farms), while in the province of Trapani it has taken on the meaning of “fort”, without ever assuming the connotations of a castle. The birth of the baglio coincides with the phenomenon of the “colonization” of vast internal areas, abandoned and uncultivated, of Sicily, by the local nobles (the “barons”), between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Spain, which at the time dominated Sicily, requiring large quantities of cereals, had established the granting of a “repopulation license” (the Licentia populandi), through which the Sicilian nobles even came to found real villages in the surroundings of the original building.
Typical beams differ between:
• Bagli owners (1500-1700)”: first generation of the Bagli
• Bagli peasants (1800)”: second generation of the Bagli Baglio Sorìa was born in 1600 as a master Baglio, and then changed its function, becoming a peasant Baglio in the period of the Unification of Italy, going through 4 centuries of history.

The baglio is the expression of a geo-economic organization linked to the fiefdom or the large estate, it was a large farm inhabited not only by the landowners themselves, but also by the peasants who worked there all year round or seasonally. It was therefore equipped with numerous lodgings, but also with stables and deposits for crops. The beams arise almost systematically near water sources and in dominant positions, from where it is easy to control the territory. The baglio was above all an expression of large-scale cereal-type large estates. Baglio is, indeed, in accordance with the Arabic etymological origin, “the central courtyard” bordered by buildings; here, sheltered from external events, the work activities took place. The various work environments overlooked this large central space:
• shelters for tools and carts
• stables for beasts of burden, peasants’ accommodation
• house of the lord
• warehouses for grains
• the grinder.
The beam underwent a profound evolution with the emergence of new social instances that brought renewed crop arrangements. The unity of Italy led to the formal delegitimization of the landed nobility and opened the stage of the Sicilian economy to an enterprising bourgeoisie, mostly “transplanted”. This was the age of the English Woodhouse, Withaker, Hopps, Ingham, Pyne and… of the Florio, originally from Calabria. The large estates, without however disappearing, left room for the development of non-cereal crops much appreciated by the foreign market, such as citrus groves, vineyards and olive groves. The direct corollary of the cultural “innovation” was, on the architectural and economic level, the birth of a “second generation” of bagli.