Location: Ischia Island, Gulf of Naples Map
Found: First fortification constructed in 474 BC by Hiero I of Syracuse
Aragonese Castle is located on Ischia Island on the Northern tip of Gulf of Naples in Italy. First military fortification on the island of Aragonese Castle were constructed in 474 BC by Hiero I (also known as Gerone and Jerone), ruler of Syracuse. The base of the citadel of Aragonese Castle was chosen effectively. This volcanic rock was incredibly hard to conquer from land and sea alike. It is no wonder that new nations that came here kept this strategic location. In 1441 Alfonso V of Aragon further increased the fortress and replaced former wooden draw bridge with a permanent causeway, thus turning the island into a peninsula. During the Renaissance period Aragonese Fort reached its peak. Rich court invited many poets, artists to live and create here. Even famous Michelangelo visited this stronghold several times.
The origins
The construction of the first castle
dates back to 474 BC. under the name of Castrum Gironis, or "castle
of Girone", in honor of its founder. In that year, in fact, the
Greek Gerone I, known as the tyrant of Syracuse, helped the Cumans
with his fleet in the war against the Tyrrhenians, contributing to
their defeat off the waters of Lacco Ameno. Debtors of this
intervention, the Cumans then decided to reward the ally by giving
him the entire island.
The fortress was then occupied by the
Parthenopei, but in 315 BC. the Romans managed to wrest control of
the island from them and founded the colony of Aenaria. The Castle
was used as a defensive fort and some houses and tall towers were
also built there to monitor the movement of enemy ships.
In
the following centuries the fortress of Gerone was radically
transformed, in order to act as a safe refuge for the population
against the sackings of Visigoths, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Arabs,
Normans (1134-1194), Svevi (1194-1265) and Angevins (1265) -1282).
The eruption of the Arso in 1301 provided a significant incentive
for the development of the urban settlement: the city of Geronda,
which stood in the area where the pine forest grows in the
twenty-first century, was destroyed, the Ischitans took refuge in
the castle which guaranteed greater tranquility and safety , giving
life to a real refuge in which to live.
The modern structure
The modern appearance of the castle is due to the Aragonese: a
quadrangular solid, with walls equipped with four towers. Starting
from the old male of the Angevin age, in 1441 Alfonso V of Aragon
gave life to a structure that followed that of the Maschio Angioino
in Naples.
The sovereign had a wooden bridge built that
connected the islet to the main island (which would later be
replaced by a stone one), while until the mid-fifteenth century the
only means of access to the castle consisted of an external
staircase of which you can still see some ruins from the sea, from
the side facing the island of Vivara. Massive walls and
fortifications were also built (such as the so-called piombatoi,
i.e. cracks from which boiling water, molten lead, stones and
bullets were thrown on the possible invader) inside which almost all
the people of Ischia found refuge and protection during raids. of
pirates.
Inside the building were placed the royal quarters
and those reserved for courtiers, troops and servants. A casemate
was placed at the foot of the castle, used as a district for the
garrison in charge of maneuvering the drawbridge.
The period
of maximum splendor of the structure occurred at the end of the
sixteenth century: at the time the castle housed 1892 families, the
convent of the Poor Clares, the abbey of the Basilian monks of
Greece, the bishop with the chapter and the seminary, the prince
with the garrison. There were 13 churches including the cathedral,
where on 27 December 1509 the wedding between Fernando Francesco
d'Avalos, marquis of Pescara and leader of the imperial troops of
Charles V, and the poet Vittoria Colonna was celebrated.
Vittoria Colonna's stay in the castle, from 1501 to 1536, coincided
with a culturally very happy moment for the whole island: the
poetess was in fact surrounded by the best artists and writers of
the century, including Michelangelo Buonarroti, Ludovico Ariosto,
Jacopo Sannazaro, Giovanni Pontano, Bernardo Tasso, Annibale Caro
l'Aretino and many others.
From the eighteenth century to the
unification of Italy
In the second half of the eighteenth
century, once the danger of pirates ceased, people began to abandon
the castle, in search of a more comfortable residence in the various
municipalities of the island in order to better take care of the
main economic activities: the cultivation of the land and fishing.
In 1809 the English troops besieged the islet, under French
command, and cannonade it until it was almost completely destroyed.
In 1823 Ferdinand I, king of the Two Sicilies and exponent of the
Bourbon dynasty, removed the last 30 inhabitants, converted the
fortress into a place of punishment for life prisoners and
transformed the rooms into lodgings for the prison guards. The
castle became, starting from 1851, a prison for the conspirators
against the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, including Carlo Poerio,
Luigi Settembrini, Michele Pironti and Pasquale Battistessa.
In 1860, with the invasion of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Ischia was annexed
to the Kingdom of Italy and the political prison was abolished.
On 8 June 1912 the administration of the state property, with
private negotiation, put the Aragonese castle up for auction. Since
then the island has been managed by private individuals, who take
care of its restoration and management. The castle is open to the
public and is a tourist destination
The buildings cover a small part of the surface of the islet,
which is mostly occupied by ruins, vegetable gardens and vineyards.
The dense constructions portrayed in the eighteenth-century prints
were largely destroyed by the war events that affected the island
under French domination in the early nineteenth century and, later,
by neglect and abandonment until the purchase of the island by an
Ischian family.
Some heirs of this family have slowly
embarked on a restoration campaign which, starting from the few
rooms chosen as their home, have gradually affected the monumental
part of the architectural complex, even if many structures are still
in ruins.
In this castle, in 1952, some scenes of the
American film The Green Island Corsair with Burt Lancaster were
shot.
Sites of greatest interest
Church of the Immaculate
Conception (18th century)
Its dome dominates the entire castle
and offers a magnificent view of the village of Ischia Ponte,
formerly called the village of Celsa due to the presence of a
mulberry plantation in the land of the Augustinian friars. They had
imported to the island the intensive breeding of silkworms (whose
nourishment, the mulberry, is precisely called morus celsa). The
activity stopped suddenly in 1809, when Gioacchino Murat issued a
decree of suppression of religious orders to take possession of the
enormous wealth that the religious had accumulated over the
centuries in the kingdom of Naples. The church was built starting
from 1737 in place of a previous chapel dedicated to St. Francis, at
the behest of the abbess Lanfreschi of the adjacent convent of the
Clarisse. The enormous financial commitment prevented the nuns from
completing the construction and, despite the fact that even the
silverware of the convent had been sold to meet the costs, the
facade and interior of the church are not finished and the walls are
completely white. The church has a Greek cross plan with the
addition of a presbytery and an entrance pronaos. On a circular
tambour with 8 large windows, the imposing dome that dominates the
entire complex of buildings insists. After the restoration carried
out in 1980, the church is used for temporary exhibitions of
painting and sculpture.
Convent of the Poor Clares
The
Convent of the Poor Clares was founded in 1575 by Beatrice Quadra,
widow of Muzio d'Avalos, who settled with forty nuns from the
convent of San Nicola which was located on Mount Epomeo. The nuns
came from noble families who generally destined them to cloistered
life from childhood to avoid the fragmentation of inheritances. The
convent was closed in 1810 following the aforementioned law of
secularization issued by Murat. A wing of the convent houses a
hotel, whose rooms are the cells of the past.
Poor Clare
Cemetery
The adjoining underground cemetery (16th century) has
stone seats close to the walls on which the lifeless bodies of the
nuns were placed in a sitting position and with an upright trunk so
that they could mummify. The flesh decomposed slowly and the liquids
were collected in special vessels located under the seats, until the
skeletons were collected in an ossuary. Every day the nuns went
there in prayer and meditated on death and the ephemeral duration of
earthly life.
Cathedral of the Assumption
This cathedral
was built by the population to replace the one located on the main
island, destroyed by the volcanic eruption of 1301. It is a basilica
with three naves, and the apsidal space was probably covered by a
lowered sixth dome. In 1509 the wedding between Fernando Francesco
d'Avalos and Vittoria Colonna was celebrated. Originally in
Romanesque style, it was retouched in the 16th century and later
finished with Baroque stucco. In 1809 it was destroyed by the cannon
fire of the English, so it looks like a semi-open space, without a
ceiling, and hosts classical music concerts and readings of prose
and poetry.
Crypt of the Cathedral
Built between the 11th
and 12th centuries, it was originally a chapel. It was transformed
into a crypt when it was built over the Cathedral of the Assumption.
It consists of a central room with a cross vault and seven small
barrel-vaulted chapels that develop along the perimeter. Each chapel
represented one of the noble families who inhabited the islet and is
decorated with frescoes of the Giotto school which are seriously
damaged and for which a restoration has been started.
Church
of San Pietro a Pantaniello
The church, whose construction
attributed is attributed to the architect Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola
in the 16th century, is an important exponent of the Italian
Renaissance.
Do not forget the church of Santa Maria delle
Grazie (16th century), the panoramic terrace of olive trees, the
political prisons (which hosted the heroes of the Italian
Risorgimento), the Maschio and the abbey of the Basilians of Greece.
Since the seventies the castle has been the stage for
numerous exhibitions dedicated to internationally renowned artists
such as Giorgio Morandi, Giacomo Manzù, Filippo de Pisis, Giorgio De
Chirico, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Aligi Sassu.
Annually it is also the setting for the music, arts and
entertainment festival.