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Castel
del Monte
The
Castel
del
Monte is located inland from Andria, near Bari, on a
prominent height of the western Murge (a local
geographical designation) in Puglia. The complete name
of the site is Santa Maria del Monte, named for an
earlier church (which no longer exists) on or near the
site. The
Castle del Monte
was started around
1240 and finished in 1249. It apparently was not
intended to be a true fortress; at least there are no
typical defensive structures such as a moat,
drawbridge or underground passageways that would
indicate such. Frederick may have simply wanted it as
a residence and hunting/falconry lodge (although those
who read magic and symbolism into the architecture—see
below—resist that prosaic view). The walls of both
outer and inner perimeters, however, are
substantial—each about 2.50 meters thick. There is
some evidence that the castle was built on the site of
an earlier Norman fortress. In any event, its location
on a height near the ancient Roman via Trajana. which
lead from Benevento to Brindisi, filled a gap in the
extensive chain of castles and forts built by
Frederick. Frederick II
There
is an entire literature dedicated to the possible
symbolism of the octagonal design. The number 8 has secular, religious
and mythological meaning; for example, the figure 8—or "lazy eight" (since
it is rotated 90 degrees into a "prone" position)
is used in
mathematics to represent infinity; there are eight
compass points; eight is the union of divine infinity
and human finiteness; there are would-be links between
the eight sides of Castel del Monte to the Holy Grail,
the Pyramids, the Fibonacci number series, ratios of
musical intervals, the temple of Solomon, the queen of
Sheba, the traditional image of Jerusalem as an
octagonal city and even an astrological interpretation
(“…All the different sections in the castle…are marked
by real and imaginary shadows cast by the sun as it
enters certain zodiacal constellations…” in Astronomia
e geometria nell’architettura di Castel del Monte
by Aldo Tavolaro, Bari 1991). There is also a lengthy
tribute—replete with even more numerology and
magico-mystical symbolism—to Castel del Monte in
Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which
contains a description of Eco’s mysterious library,
the octagonal building that “…made on me the same impression as Castel
Orsino or Castel del Monte I was later to see in the
south of the Italian peninsula.” (It may be
that Castel del Monte was built on earlier models such
as the Egisheim castle in the Alsace, the San Vitale
Basilica in Ravenna, or the Palatine Chapel in Aachen;
that does, of course, not exclude esoteric
interpretation of the architecture—it just pushes it
back in time a bit to other locations.) As far as I
know, no one has read into the architecture anything
to do with alien abductions—but that is only as far as
I know. (And there is
that crop circle in the adjacent field!) With
the fall of the house of Hohenstaufen (1268, the date
of the execution in Piazza
Mercato in Naples of Conradin, the last
Hohenstaufen pretender to the throne of the Kingdom of
Naples, at the hands of Charles I of Anjou), the
Castel del Monte became an Angevin prison and went
into a long period of decline and decay that lasted
centuries. The new Italian government bought the
premises in 1876 and started the process of
restoration, a process that is now complete or near
complete and one that has given us the splendid
structure we see today. In 1996, the Castel del Monte
was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List: “…The
site represents an extraordinary value for the whole
world, expressed through formal perfection and the
harmonious blending of cultural elements derived from
Central Europe, the Orient and the classical world of
antiquity…” (Also see this excerpt about the Castel del Monte from Janet Ross' 1889 book, The Land of Manfred.) references: Mola,
Stefania.
(2002) Castel
del Monte, n. 4 in the series Puglia in Tasca.
Mario Adda editore, Bari. ISBN 88-8082-465-1, which
contains an extensive bibliography.
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Castel del Monte is
the best known of the many castles built by Holy Roman
Emperor 
The
architecture is among the first examples of the Gothic
style in Puglia. It is, however, a special Gothic. The
entire structure is octagonal. There are eight towers,
and there are eight rooms each on both floors. The
internal courtyard is also an octagon. There is a
splendid arched portal as an entrance and there are
windows between all towers, one window for the upper
floor and one for the lower.