Castel del Monte is the monument-symbol of Frederick II and has always fascinated scholars and the public: what is its destination, its history, its meaning? We discover it in this in-depth study.
On 29 January 1240, the emperor and king of Sicily, Frederick II of Swabia (Jesi, 1194 - Fiorentino di Puglia, 1250), wrote a letter from Gubbio to Riccardo da Montefuscolo, Giustiziere Della Capitanata (the official who represented the sovereign in the Capitanata, one of the administrative subdivisions of the kingdom of Sicily, roughly corresponding to the current province of Foggia), in which he ordered to do the attracts "pro Castro quod apud Sanctam Mariam de Monte fieri volumus", or "for the castle that we wanted to build near Santa Maria del Monte". It is not yet well understood what the term attracts referred to (perhaps a floor, or a roof, or even it is simply a term that refers to the building material: in essence, we do not know if the work was in the start-up phase or nearing completion), but the fact is that this letter of 1240 is the first known document that concerns the most interesting castle of Frederick as well as one of the most famous monuments of Puglia and southern Italy: Castel del Monte.
- The imposing building is then mentioned in a document written between 1241 and 1246, and known as Statutum de reparation castrorum, which lists the castles that were to be repaired by the communities of reference: Castel del Monte, presented as a building already completed, is again mentioned as castrum, a term with which in documents of the time were designated the military fortresses with purely defensive functions.
- Yet, scholars for decades have questioned (and continue to question) the function of this very special octagonal castle. Some have questioned a possible defensive function of Castel del Monte: those who support this thesis rely on the fact that around the building there is no wall, there is no moat or drawbridge, there are no workstations suitable for defense (for example for archers), and so on. One of the main Italian medievalists and one of the most expert scholars of Frederick II, Raffaele Licinio, however, challenged this theory, pointing out that in the Middle Ages there were castles without levatoî bridges and walls but still did not lose their defensive and military functions (Licinius even pointed out that, in this sense, Castel del Monte "pays a high price to the image of the medieval castle somehow the daughter of Walter Scott and the nineteenth-century historical novels, whose setting was taken up, disseminated by the cinema and eventually imposed as a realistic, if not authentic, historical reconstruction"). However, the castle had some defensive structures: some ancient documents (one from 1289 and another from 1349) mention, for example, the presence of a wall outside the octagon, which was destroyed in later eras. Of course, it is also true that no documentation has yet been found that can provide certain information on the intended use of the castle, and for this reason have been proposed the most varied hypotheses: those who considered it a residence of pleasure or a hunting lodge, some a room for imperial audiences, others still a labyrinth or a purely aesthetic construction and devoid of any real purpose, those who went so far as to consider it a temple for esoteric rites, a center for astronomical observations or a sort of large medieval hammam, a place for spa treatments.
Recently, the historian Massimiliano Ambruoso, with a couple of his studies, has dismantled all the most imaginative hypotheses, from the esoteric to the one that would like Castel del Monte to be a spa: for the sake of brevity, it can be said that these are always hypotheses not supported by any document, the result of imaginative elaborations often spanned in the air, impossible to prove, sometimes completely disregarded the historical context of reference, and without further evidence (for example, there was never at the time a castle that served as a spa, and the presence of water pipes and pipelines, which in fact appear in all medieval castles, is not sufficient reason to make Castel del Monte a spa of the thirteenth century). Cassette, of course, also all the theories that relate Castel del Monte to unlikely research of holy grails, if only for the fact that there is no evidence of the presence of templars in Capitanata and the fact that between the knights and Frederick II did not run good blood. What, then, is the most probable theory about the use and usefulness of Castel del Monte?
Perhaps it is obvious to point this out, but in medieval documents the building is always mentioned as castrum, castle, which should dispel any doubt about alternative destinations such as spa, temple, astronomical observatory or whatever (if so, the documents would not have used the term castrum): it is quite likely, as Ambruoso suggested, that Castel del Monte had the function of strengthening the system of Frederick's castles, which near Santa Maria del Monte was rather lacking.