A fortified citadel-love stories and splendours
by Giovanni Di Meglio
The Aragonese Castle, one of the finest in the Mediterannean, has always been part of the island's turbulent history. Now it is coming back to life again, with all its memories.
In June 1809 when Stewart, commander of the Anglo-Bourbon fleet, gave the order to bomb Castello d'<%=ischia%>, the little island occupied by Joachim Murat's French troops, from the bay of Cartaromana, little did he know that this action marked the final stage in the fortified citadel's relentless decadence. The consequences of this conflict were disastrous. In a few days, the four-hundred-year old medieval village built by Alphonse of Aragon and pompously named the "City of Eternal Loyalty" by Don Frederick, the last king of the dynasty, was entirely erased from history.
The Angevin cathedral was totally destroyed and the remains of the ancient monuments were collected by compassionate clergymen and reassembled in other churches on the island. The bishop decided it was more convenient to move to the eighteenth-century residence in Borgo Marinaro, the little town below, where the remaining religious and civic institutions were also housed in noble palazzos. Only the military garrison remained in the Keep at the top of the citadel for a few more decades, until the Bourbons turned it into a high-security prison for political prisoners. Yet for over two millenniums this island, far smaller than the "greater" island of <%=ischia%>, played a leading role in local history. Though an age-old tradition maintains that the first settlement on the "Rock" - the people of <%=ischia%>'s affectionate name for the Castle - was founded in the 5th century BC by Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, who received the island from the inhabitants of Cumae in exchange for his help against the Etruscans, in reality the only historically ascertained facts date back to the early Middle Ages.
The Castle is mentioned by Pope Gregory the Great as "Castrum Gironis", that is a circular or round military fortress, and two centuries later Leo III recommended it to Charlemagne as protection against the Mauri, pirates of Arab origin, while Normans and Swabians turned it into a military bulwark defending the bay of Naples.
The Castle was extended mainly by the Angevin kings (Charles II and above all Robert) and visited by Petrarch and Boccaccio, who was so struck by the beauty of the place that he used the bay of Cartaromana and the fortress as the setting of the sixth novella of the fifth day of the Decameron, which tells the exquisite love story of Restituta Bulgari and Giovanni da Procida, nephew of the more famous hero of the "Sicilian Vespers".
The Castle had a moment of glory when Baldassarre Cossa, son of the military governor Giovanni, was elected pope with the name of John XXIII and then deposed by the Council of Constance. However, the first to give the castle the status of a fortified town was Alphonse of Aragon, to the extent that it became the "Aragonese" castle par excellence - a discreet place of pleasure in times of peace and an impregnable military bastion in times of war.
Within the walls of the Keep, totally restored and extended like the one in Naples, a middle-aged King Alphonse spent some days in the arms of his young and beautiful mistress Lucrezia d'Alagni, whom everyone in Naples honoured as if she were his wife, though the real queen lived in voluntary exile in Barcelona. While waiting to marry her, Alphonse gave Lucrezia the fief of <%=ischia%> as a token of his love.
Those same walls protected the fugitives Ferdinand II and Don Frederick, the last Aragonese kings, when first Charles VIII of France and then, a few years later, the Spaniard Ferdinand the Catholic decided to conquer Naples. When the latter was successful, the most beautiful kingdom of the Mediterranean was downgraded to viceroyalty.
On the contrary, these were years of great splendour for the Aragonese Castle, dominated by two powerful noble families, the Colonna and the d'Avalos, who sealed their alliance by marrying seventeen-year old Vittoria Colonna to Ferrante d'Avalos. The wedding ceremony was celebrated in the cathedral of the Castle on December 27, 1509, with great pomp, in the Spanish manner, in the presence of those members of the Aragonese court who did not consider it necessary to leave the kingdom. The alliance was approved by governor Costanza d'Altavilla, so famous for her military talent that contemporary chroniclers called her "Joan of Arc". Benedetto Croce suggested that she could have been Leonardo's model for the world's most famous painting - but the fascinating hypothesis that Mona Lisa is a portrait of Costanza remains to be proved. On the other hand, it is certain that Vittoria Colonna founded in the Aragonese Castle, which she celebrated in various sonnets, an important literary coterie frequented by illustrious poets. Sannazzaro and Craiteo were the first, followed in the course of twenty years by Galeazzo di Tarsia, Anysio, Paolo Giovio, Marcantonio Minturno, Flaminio, Bernardo Tasso (father of the more famous Torquato), Luigi Tansillo and Berardino Rota. She also had the great honour of receiving the emperor Charles V in her rooms in the Castle.
The European range - if it can be described as such - of this coterie is proved by Vittoria's exchange of letters with the most important men of her times, including the Duke of Mantua, who sent her Titian's Magdalen, Michelangelo, who presented her with a drawing of Christ on the Cross flanked by the two thieves, Pietro Aretino, Ludovico Ariosto, Baldassarre Castiglione, Pietro Bembo, cardinal Reginaldo Polo and pope Clement VII, to mention only a few.
The 16th century was a period of great glory for the Castle, which was organised like a citadel-fortress on a smaller scale with a drawbridge, massive walls in the lee of the rock face, sophisticated defences, a system for collecting rainwater, the Keep for troops and the residence of the military governor, the bishop's palace, the seat of the municipal parliament, noble palaces and no less than ten churches, including the cathedral with a crypt containing tombs of illustrious families, as well as three parish churches. It even boasted two monasteries inhabited by the Greek monks of Saint Basil and the enclosed order of the Poor Clares founded by the noblewoman Beatrice della Quadra, widow of Muzio d'Avola, for young girls of noble birth destined to become nuns so as not to break up the family fortunes. These poor creatures were forced to remain closed in the convent even after their death, since it was the custom to place the corpses on stone catafalques in the cemetery below their church, which visitors can still see today.
Then came the slow, inexorable decline and the constant depopulation of the town due to the demand for new urban development areas, the diminished risk of Saracen raids and the need to move nearer to places of work. Only the institutional headquarters remained, totally detached from the social and economic context, until the Anglo-Bourbon fleet commanded by Stewart made it necessary for them to be evicted too.
After the Risorgimento risings in 1848, the Bourbons turned the Castle into a political jail, where the cream of the southern intelligentsia who fought for the unification of Italy was imprisoned. Carlo Poerio, Filippo Agresti, Silvio Spaventa, Nicola Nisco, Michele Pironti, Gaetano Errichiello, Vito Purcaro and many other generous patriots were shut up in dark cells where dirt and promiscuity were the rule. Ironically, before they were abolished those very cells housed the Bourbon soldiers who opposed the Piedmont army at Gaeta.
When the prison was closed the property fell into such neglect that in the early 20th century the Ministry of Defence, to whom it belonged, was forced to sell the Castle to private parties in two separate lots, consisting of the buildings still standing, though very unsafe, and the properties considered of an agricultural nature. It proved to be a wise move because the owners restored and enhanced the existing buildings, which in recent years have been used to house art exhibitions of international importance, like the ones dedicated to Manzù, Morandi and other contemporary masters.
Giovanni Di Meglio, freelance journalist |