Castel del Monte
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How it came to be
Castel del Monte stands on a hill 540 m high at Andria in Apulia. The emperor Frederick II, who had inherited these lands from his mother Constance of Sicily, built it in the 1240s on the site of an earlier fortress. In a document of 1240 he ordered the governor of Capitanata to finish works at the castle.
The castle is an octagon with an octagonal tower at each corner, and each of its two floors has eight rooms around an eight-sided courtyard. UNESCO notes an innovative hydraulic installation that Frederick used for bathing according to Arab custom. With neither moat nor drawbridge it was once taken for a hunting lodge, but scholars now think it originally had a curtain wall.
After Frederick's death the castle became a state prison under Charles I of Anjou, and from 1266 Manfred's sons were held there. In the 18th century its marble was stripped, and members of the House of Bourbon reused its columns and window frames at their palace in Caserta. The Italian state bought the castle in 1876 for 25,000 lire and began restoring it in 1928, and it was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1996.
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