The castle is located in the square of the same name within the Santa Maria district, northeast of the city. It is a strategic point in city life, The dimensions of the outer sides of the castle, measured at the base of the frame of the corner bastions, are variable, with the east front, the longest of all, being about 127 meters long, the west front, shorter by three meters, and the south and north ones, both about 120 meters long. The diagonal between the tips of the ramparts measures about 125 meters, within which there are two tiers of superimposed
casemates with a diameter of 16 meters. The height of the west front, the tallest one given the presence of the bomb disposal laboratory building, corresponds to about 24 meters while the north front, the shortest, has a maximum height of 19 meters. The walls of the castle vary in thickness from 5 to 12 meters and are built of
limestone cut into squared and barely rusticated blocks, much of which was taken from buildings destroyed during the sack of 1528. of a quadrangular shape, with the characteristic pentagonal lance-shaped ramparts at the four corners and the four arms of the building joining them together. In the middle is the square courtyard. and castle gardens. All the elevations of the castle are vertically divided into three parts: the lower part with the slight scarp basement ends at the top with a rather protruding torus
molding, in some cases interrupted by the presence of embrasures for cannon; the first elevation, which sees at the base the presence of embrasures for the cannons and sometimes other small ventilation holes, characterized by the typical stone face of the Barletta castle, bordered above by a further torus molding of smaller size than the base molding, also sometimes interrupted by the presence of the usual embrasures; the upper part marked by the exposed masonry is crowned by a
merlon. At the top of the edge of the southeastern bastion stands the stone coat of arms of the Spanish dynasty. The entrance to the castle is preceded by an opening, called the "parade ground," in front of which stands the
ravelin. Once past this first access one finds oneself in front of a masonry bridge with three arches. The fourth arch, made of
tuff, was replaced by a wooden bridge during restoration work between 1973 and 1987. Maintenance work regarding only the wooden bridge took place between October 6 and October 17, 2008. The entrance portal opens in the center of the southern facade and has a rectangular entrance encased in an archway. The quadrangular entrance is surmounted by an ornately decorated
architrave and a stone slab testifying to the delivery of the castle in 1584.
Exterior Gardens surrounding the castle
The moat The castle is surrounded on all sides by a moat about twenty-four meters wide in relation to the sides of the ramparts and thirty-five meters wide in relation to the outer walls of the castle curtains. It widens further on the northern front, toward the sea, exceeding one hundred and ten meters, expanding into an arena, about one hundred meters away from the waters of the sea. It is surrounded by a retaining wall with a total length equal to about seven hundred meters and a maximum height of seven meters. Placed 1.50 meters above sea level and 7.85 meters below the castle's entrance level, from the Norman period it was surrounded by the waters of the sea, and during Angevin rule the shoreline lapped its northern front. As early as the end of the 16th century, historical plans testify to the retreat of the waters and the transformation of the moat into a marshy area, which from the late 20th century was cultivated at least until 1931. The first document in which an order for the construction of the moat appears is dated February 10, 1280, in which its construction is requested starting from the east front, the one towards Trani, passing through the south side, up to the northwest tower, leaving the north walls in direct contact with the waters of the
sea. At the end of the 15th century
Ferdinand I of Naples continued its excavation and on September 5, 1515, fearing the danger of war, the mayor requested the completion of the works concerning the moat and the city walls. Restoration work between 1973 and 1987 also involved the moat and retaining walls, which was renovated in accordance with earthquake regulations with a sewage outflow system. In 2004, the municipal administration then provided for the further enhancement of the moat through the construction of a turf with an associated irrigation system.
The gardens The castle gardens, named after the
Cervi Brothers, extend on all sides around the castle, except along the entire northern front, located near the sea. These underwent restoration works aimed at upgrading the state of the places and the lighting system, to be transformed into a park with equipped areas, and after two years, on December 7, 2002, they were returned to the citizens of Barletta, who made them a focal point of the historic center. Near the main entrance to the gardens, located in axis with the ravelin, is the historic ornamental fountain, strongly desired by the soldiers of the Military District and inaugurated on November 11, 1941. Left unused and then partially destroyed after the wartime episodes on June 12, 2004, the fountain was reconstructed and reactivated, partly due to painstaking restoration work on the stone blocks, thus fulfilling its function as a drinking water distribution point.
The ravelin and the entrance bridge of the castle of Barletta Access to the castle is mediated by the presence of the
ravelin and the subsequent bridge over the moat. Until the 18th century, the ravelin was part of a larger defense system that, through winding paths, led to the widening in front of the guardhouse. This is divided into two lateral compartments from the central atrium, each having a hole in the wall opposite the entrance, while the roof is enclosed by
tuff masonry provided with
embrasures, except on the side facing the bridge where the parapet is lower to allow military maneuvers with the interior. During restoration work in the 1980s, the presence of a staircase was revealed to have led from the west compartment onto the structure's
terrace. However, the staircase that was found was not made usable because the ravelin lacks an exit to the terrace, so arrival on the solar slab can only be from the masonry deck through the use of an external staircase. Once past the ravelin, until Grisotti's restoration, the entrance bridge to the castle was supported by three massive vertical piers and as many
arches, in addition to a smaller arch connecting the last pier with the castle which can be dated to around the 19th century, thus after the removal of the
drawbridge. Restoration work, considering the precarious condition and lacking historical matrix, led to the demolition of the latter arch and, due to the discovery of the support point of the ancient drawbridge built at the end of the 16th century The wooden bridge underwent new maintenance in 2008, with the replacement of the wooden beams.
The entrance portal and exterior fronts dynasty is visible. The gateway to the castle consists of a round arch recessed in a rectangular
ashlar portion of the exterior wall. Above the rectangular hole is an
architrave, sandwiched between two shell-shaped decorations, on which stands an inscription in
Latin preceded by a
Greek cross and divided into two parts by a rosette-shaped decoration, which reads: It should be mentioned that Diego Feliz, mentioned in the inscription, was a
castellan of the building, in which he died in 1584. In axis with the portal but in a higher position is a decoration with a dagger, cross-hilted, pointing downward and dating back to 1585, as evidenced by the engraving on the plaque itself. All the fronts of the castle are characterized, from bottom to top, by a small portion of smooth stone scarp wall surmounted by a cornice with torus molding, from which departs the lower part of the main masonry, scarped in ashlar stone. At about mid-height of the gables there is a second cornice with torus molding that marks the beginning of the upper part of the masonry, again in ashlar stone but no longer scarp, which ends at the top with a
merlon. Both the lower and upper masonry have a series of splayed openings, some of which were originally used as embrasures, others as skylights. Notably, until a few years after 1860, from the northern and southern fronts, cannons on feast days fired twenty-one blanks at dawn, noon, and dusk, respectively. The west side appears to be higher than the others due to the presence, on the roof plane, of the bomb squad room and rooms formerly used as soldiers' quarters. The north front, on the other hand, shows signs of the cannonades suffered during World War I. Other noteworthy decorations present on the exterior elevations include the presence of the Aragonese coat of arms on the major edge of the southeastern bastion, as well as numerous male masks, lion
protomes and shields, both on the pentagonal bastions and on the rectilinear flanks. Near the bastion of St. Vincent, within the castle moat, it is possible to make out the remnants of the junction between the castle and the ancient wall that joined to the northwest with the walls of Barletta.
Interior The entrance hall and chapel Past the
portal, one enters a covered atrium with an
ogival vault. In this room there is a plaque, placed under a shield identifiable as that of
Charles V, on which is the Latin inscription: This inscription would recall the sovereign's visit to the building during the construction works. and which during the 16th century must have constituted the ancient Angevin chapel, To the left of the
ogival-roofed
atrium is the arched entrance to the courtyard and, in the adjacent room, the library.
The courtyard The hub around which the entire castle structure is articulated is the courtyard, almost square in shape with sides of about thirty-five meters. In its centerline, with a north-south orientation, there are two visible wells, under which there are as many cisterns. As evidence of the ancient Angevin
palatium, during the restoration, a three-meter wide
cavity wall was built immediately beyond the wall facing the sea, about thirteen meters long and seven meters high. This was then covered with a
reinforced concrete slab in which a hole about fifty centimeters long and as wide as the cavity wall was drilled, protected by a metal grating that allows daylighting, rainwater runoff, and a view from above of the portion of the boundary wall of the ancient fortress, remodeled following the
Spanish intervention. Leaning against the western wall is a flight of steps that leads on one side to the 16th-century monumental staircase and the first-floor rooms on the western side, which since November 30, 2010 have housed the museum hub of the Civic Museum, while on the other leads to the first-floor rooms on the southern side. The north front is enclosed at the ends by two arches, similar to those on the west elevation, between which are three rectangular openings, providing access to the rooms of the north arm, which are also all communicating with each other and at the same time connected with the west side by a corner room located to the northwest. The elevation is entirely marked by a succession of openings of different sizes placed at different heights. At the east end orthogonally to the north facade there is a long staircase, uncovered all the way up except on the final appendage at the north front where it is covered by a round arch, leading to the rooms on the east side and to the roof plane. On the left side of the staircase is the access ramp to the basement and the sea wall of the Angevin
palatium. The east front presents, for almost its entire length, the imposing staircase for access to the terrace. This is punctuated by five arches of progressively increasing width from north to south and decreasing height. On a lower perspective plane runs a parapet that protects from the underlying flight of stairs that provides access from the courtyard to the basement. The eastern facade is divided horizontally into two parts of avowedly different workmanship: the southernmost one dates from the Swabian-Angevin period, with the presence of the Frederician
domus; Confirmation of the Swabian matrix of this front is also given by the presence of a
monofora and a
bifora, both on the second floor, provided with a
lunette with the Swabian eagle carved on it, the ancient Norman tower whose interior is visible through an opening on the courtyard level; on a level further back toward the center of the courtyard is a wide round-arched arch that, before the restorations, connected through another arch to the portico leading to the exit. The precarious structural condition of the connecting arch caused it to be demolished, leaving the trace of its former existence by not completing the portion of the arch from which the shutter of the demolished structure departed. Proceeding westward, a triple archway makes a portico and supports the upper balcony. Through the first archway there is access to what was once the chapel; from the second archway one glimpses a hole in the axis of the entrance portal to the castle; the third archway sees the presence of a milestone column of the
Via Traiana, coming from
Cannae and transferred to the castle of Barletta since 1820, which has an epigraph engraved on a limestone
cippus that reads: .
The ground floor The courtyard houses the distribution spaces that allow the arrival to the upper floors and the descent to the basement: the first level can be accessed through the double staircase leaning against the west front, while the underground level can be reached either through the staircase placed parallel to the east front, or by following the staircase, located under the porch of the southern side, discovered during the restoration work in the 1980s. From the courtyard there is access to the northeast to a room that leads, via a narrow corridor on a slight slope, to a large circular room covered by a canopy and pierced in the middle by a circular skylight: this is the convention hall known as the Red Room inside the
casemate of St. Anthony. An additional
oculus is present in the middle of the hall and allows a glimpse of the room below. A similar conformation is found, in a mirror-image fashion, both in the northwest corner room that allows the entrance to the circular hall on the ground floor of the St. Vincent bastion, and in the southwest room that by means of a walkway excavated in the rock during restoration work in the 1980s, connects with the St. Mary bastion. From the courtyard floor, descending in elevation for about 1.30 meters, one enters the Swabian-Angevin wing to the southeast.
The dungeons It is possible to access the dungeons through two staircases located in the courtyard: one on the east side, parallel to the monumental staircase leading to the terrace, and the other on the south side. The latter was discovered through an analysis of the eighteenth-century model made by Giovanni Carafa, duke of Noja, during restoration work. Once in the dungeon from the staircase on the east side one finds oneself in a vestibule that leads on the right to the
casemate of the bastion of St. Anthony, on the left to the northern arm of the dungeon. The casemate has a circular plan and a canopy roof with an
oculus in the center, reminiscent of the opening made in the roof of the
Pantheon. The only exception to the plan of the corner rooms of the ramparts is the lower casemate of the bastion connected to the Frederician
domus, to the southeast, whose sides follow the outer ones with a pentagonal plan. The vestibule leads to the northern area of the castle, divided into five rooms, all communicating with each other, rectangular in shape; in the second room it is possible to glimpse an exit to the sea equipped with a slipway for pulling boats inside the structure, following restoration protected with metal gratings and used as an entrance for disabled people. This leads to the casemate of the St. Vincent bastion, located to the northwest. Like the other bastions, the latter is also equipped with splayed embrasures. It continues by passing another corridor, in the middle of which it is possible to notice the foundations of a section of the
breakwater wall belonging to the outer curtain of the ancient Angevin palace, which was found during the restorations. so much so that during the work a descent to the lower level was forcibly made to allow visitors access. Inside, just below the floor level, the foundation structure of the ancient Angevin round tower was found, with an external reinforcing
buttress inclined to a scarp, used in the past as a cistern, and left exposed after the work of architect Grisotti. Like the bastion of Santa Maria, the bastion of the Annunziata, located at the Frederician
domus to the southeast, also appears to have no direct connections with the underground rooms, which instead end to the southwest. The hypotheses put forward following the restoration have suggested that there was less need for defense on the sides of the fortress facing the city, which led the Spaniards not to intervene on the two underground rooms facing south, especially since the bastion of the Annunziata is in any case connected to the courtyard level by a very steep staircase with two trunks placed at right angles, which starts from inside the
domus. Confirming the uniqueness of this area of the castle, the basement floor of this bastion is the only one to have a pentagonal plan, thus following the conformation of the outer fronts, while the upper floor resumes the circular shape ending with a calotte and its central oculus. This difference is due to the recovery of the structure of an earlier ravelin, placed at this very edge of the castle, Following restoration in the 1980s, the entire floor of the dungeon was characterized by an
earthen floor and numerous splayed holes with no fixtures, keeping the original image of the underground level almost unchanged. Further restoration work was completed in May 2009, which allowed the arrangement of the flooring of the east and north wings by affixing a wooden stave that made the area easy, enabling its musealization. Since then, the north wing has been home to the display of the medieval and modern part of the lapidary with coats of arms, tombstones and inscriptions arranged along the walls of the rooms. From May 16 to August 30, 2009, the basement hosted the contemporary art exhibition "Intramoenia Extra Art," under the scientific direction of Achille Bonito Oliva, aimed at enhancing not only the works on display but also the monument that was the site of the exhibition.
The upper floors The second floor can be divided into two mutually separate parts: that of Swabian-Angevin features, to the southeast, which can be accessed from the monumental staircase leaning against the eastern side, which leads directly into the rooms, or from the staircase located at the access to the castle dating back to the 16th century, located behind the western elevation or from the staircase to the east heading toward the rooms located to the north. The western wing is characterized by a regular geometry with rooms communicating with each other in succession through holes that make the scanning of the pathway visible in perspective. in which there is a large fireplace and larger rooms. Historical documentation has made it possible to hypothesize that the rooms were used as soldiers' quarters. Passing the first succession of steps of the "grand staircase" to the west and ascending further through a small staircase leaning against the south side, one enters the rooms of the southern front. Connected to the reception rooms of the west wing, they are a continuation of them for civilian use, as evidenced by the presence of a chimney, the only example in the entire fortress of a hearth
extradosed to the masonry. In the east wing, the Frederician wing, are the rooms used as the reading room of the municipal library and the offices of the administrative staff. The entire wing is covered by a pointed arch vault, with a chimney carved into the wall on the southern front. The second floor covering is accessible through the staircase leaning against the east wall of the courtyard, which leads to the terrace of the northern curtain wall. The staircase continues by rotating 180 degrees, until it reaches the second floor covering. Along this staircase, covered for the first section by a round-headed vault that follows the inclination of the flight of stairs, there is a slit in the floor covered by a metal grating that allows one to observe the diversity between the eastern Frederician wall and the Spanish encasement. The second floor covering covers all the remaining curtain walls and, passing the southern arm, allows one to arrive at the bomb disposal laboratory, located along the west side. Prior to the restorations of the 1980s, the roofs were in a precarious condition from the point of view of both conservation and safety, due on the one hand to neglect, and on the other hand to the degradation of numerous
superelevations without historical foundation, which followed one another until the beginning of the 20th century. Thus, the roofing planes were rebuilt with the waterproofing of all horizontal surfaces and the repositioning of the paving stones, both on the ramparts and on the side curtain walkways. The bastions of the Annunziata and St. Vincent's also had centrally located emerging structures covered with tiles that allowed ventilation and illumination of the upper
casemates, while at the same time allowing rainwater to enter from the sides. In this regard, the restoration included the replacement of the previous elements visible from the outside of the castle with less invasive structures that would improve lighting, making it zenithal, and allow rainwater to drain away. Along the western curtain wall of the roof plane is an imposing structure, the main front of which is characterized by a rough-hewn stone wall with a large central opening above which towers a Spanish coat of arms, dating back to 1620, provided with a paved roofing that resurfaced during restoration work. This is the headwall of the "bomb-makers' workshop," whose construction work began on June 3, 1621. It is therefore thought that the building of this hall was due to the Spaniards' desire to give luster to the castle, at a time when the structure was no longer part of the economic and military interests of the time. == The castle in mass culture ==