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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 August 2013
The few scholars who have specialised upon military architecture in Italy have, very naturally, concentrated their attention on the spectacular work of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, chiefly in Apulia and Sicily, to a lesser extent in the North; Central Italy as a whole, has been neglected, and particularly the neighbourhood of Rome. There alone can the unimpressive fortresses of the early middle ages be seen in abundance, most of them untouched except by natural decay, because they were not rebuilt when their obsolescence became recognised, but abandoned—in a large number of instances, so documents imply, during the fourteenth century. This article is an attempt to trace the course of local development down to 1300, as shown mainly at certain key-sites. The argument rests on a basis of combined archaeological and documentary evidence; the former is limited by the amount of field-work done by my predecessors or by myself, the latter I have derived entirely from the regional historians of the past hundred years. Investigation of sites not yet reported, and of documents not yet searched for relevant information, should eventually lead to a more precise chronology than is now feasible.
1 Ebhardt, Bodo, Die Burgen Italiens, ii. 2, 1910Google Scholar (?), and iii, 1916, is cited as ‘Ebh.’, G. and Tomassetti, F., La Campagna Romana, i–iv, 1910–1926Google Scholar ‘Tom.’ References to the Carta d'Italia 1: 25000 are given by the name of the sheet and its coordinates, each to three figures. I am greatly indebted to Mrs. Anne Kahane for taking me to see many of the fortresses noted during the British School's survey of the country north of Rome, as well as several in other directions. Mr. G. D. B. Jones kindly gave me information on sites he had investigated, and has allowed the reproduction of two of his photographs—the general view of Old Palombara and the detail of vaulting at Castel Morolo. I must also thank Mr. M. E. Mallett for saving me from error over certain documentary evidence.
2 I. A. Richmond, The City Wall of Imperial Rome, 1930.
3 Acta Instituti Romani Regni Suaeciae, xxii, Opuscula Romana, iv, 1962—Boethius, pp. 36, 43Google Scholar, figs. 9, 10, and Lawrence, p. 44.
4 The remains in the Vatican Gardens are obviously of diverse periods, three of which must be late medieval. The semi-circular tower on the Via Aurelia (at the former Porta Cavallegieri) is attributed, because of the masonry, to the twelfth century. Between the Vatican and Castel S. Angelo the exterior is no longer visible, and the old drawings enable only a guess to be made of the period to which the lower portions might belong, though the upper are shown clearly as late medieval.
5 PBSR, xxv, 1957, p. 155Google Scholar, fig. 26, pl. XXVII, for New Falerii, p. 128 ff. for Civita Castellana.
6 For a general description of the site, and further notes on the castle, see Appendix I.
7 Tom. iv, pp. 332–340, revising Archivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria, viii, 1885, p. 472Google Scholar, plan at p. 474; A. L. Frothingham, Monuments of Christian Rome, 1908, p. 220; P. Stettiner, Roma nei suoi Monumenti, 1911, p. 351, fig. 365; Silvestrelli, G., Città Castelli e Terre della Regione Romana, i, 1940, p. 216Google Scholar.
8 Both appear to have been watch-towers; I refer later to that at Tarquinia. The castle at Catino is mentioned from 1047 onwards, and a palatium in castello Catini in 1096 (F. Palmegiani, Rieti e la Regione Sabino, p. 609, with two photographs). The separate tower is built with an ashlar-faced base of white limestone, and coigned with similar stone up to roughly half the total height around reddish masonry; the upper part is composed entirely of the reddish stone.
9 Map Palombara-Sabina 161612.
10 There are, of course, many existing Italian towns and villages which clearly originated with a continuous ring of houses. The present town of Palombara is an instance; the houses surround a late medieval castle on the summit (pl. XXVII, a, background).
11 Another round arch of remarkable width, with roofing-tiles for voussoirs, spans the west gateway of Galeria, a town first mentioned in 1027, when it already contained two churches (S. Maria di Galeria 765564; Anna M. Respighi, Galeria, 1956).
12 Martinori, E., Lazio Turrito, ii, 1935, p. 135Google Scholar.
13 A somewhat comparable site, called Pampinara or Piombinara, is identifiable with the Castrum Fluminariae which was already more than a century old in 1208, when a Pope gave it to his brother; the extent to which it was then rebuilt is uncertain. The towers project scarcely 1·60m. (Tomassetti, and Ferrari, , Archivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria, xxviii, 1905, p. 146Google Scholar, with plan reproduced on a falsified scale; T. Ash by, The Roman Campagna in Classical Times, 1927, p. 52; PBSR, v, pl. XXXIV. 2; Ebh. ii. 2, pls. 153–4, iii, pl. 147.
14 Some parts of the walls of Viterbo presumably belong to this period, and so, no doubt, do scraps elsewhere.
15 Palmegiani, op. cit.; Ebh. iii, pl. 111, inaccurate early plan; Touring Club Italiano, Lazio, 1953, p. 67, fairly reliable plan and external view.
16 Palmegiani, op. cit., photograph on p. 167.
17 Encyclopedia Italiana, s.v. Como, photograph main gate. I intend to write further about the walls of Como, Castelfranco Veneto (1199), Cittadella (1220), etc.18F. J. E. Raby and Reynolds, Ministry of Works Official Guide, Framlingham Castle, 1959; Brown, R. A., Proc. of Suffolk Inst. of Arch, and Nat. Hist., xxv, 1952, p. 127Google Scholar.
19 Martinori, E., Lazio Turrito, ii, p. 235Google Scholar, photograph.
20 Ebh. iii, pls. 117, 121; Touring Club Italiano, Attraverso l'Italia, vi, Toscana ii, p. 203Google Scholar, fig. 170.
21 Inf. xxxi, 40.
22 L. Petrucci, Massa Marittima, 1900; S. Galli da Modigliana and O. Comparini, Memorie storiche di Massa Marittima, 1871, especially i, plan at p. 16, ii, pl. VI, for wall of 1206 (omitted on Ebh. plan, iii, fig. 425).
23 Martinori, , op. cit., ii, p. 135Google Scholar. Another of the family possessions, Castel Savello, is thought to have been built mainly under their Popes of 1216–17 and 1285–87. It occupied the summit of a little hill outside Albano. Only a few scraps of masonry were visible in 1958, revetting low terraces; some, if not all, of the lost walls must also have been backed by earth to most of their height. The remains and the shape of the ground are compatible with a plan drawn when a great deal more could still be seen (E. Rocchi, Le Fonte storiche dell' Architettura Militare, 1908, p. 154). It shows a palace, a church and rows of small buildings inside the enclosure, and hints that the perimeter (of some 500 m.) may have been treated in a manner stylistically intermediate between the enceinte and the castle of Old Palombara.
24 Etruscan Culture, Land and People, 1962, p. 329, for a preliminary study by B. Thordeman, who has since found additional evidence which will, I understand, enable him to give a more precise dating.
25 Ebh. ii. 2, pls. 172–173.
26 Ebh. ii. 2, pls. 172–173.
27 L. Borsari, Il Castello di Bracciano, 1895.
28 Ebh. iii, pl. 149, centre of left lower photograph.
29 Tom. ii, p. 532, figs. 18–19.
30 Ebh. ii. 2, figs. 437, 480–486.
31 Stimigliano 952816. The ruins are in very poor condition, and partially overgrown. The ditch is abnormally wide and deep.
32 Cività Castellana 874817; Tom. iii, p. 361. A portcullis groove, in the arched gateway of a small room, is probably the earliest preserved in the district.
33 PBSR, xxv, 1957, p. 176Google Scholar.
34 The condition of each rural community, from time to time, may be inferred from the salt-tax records, and correlated, more or less hesitantly, with the maintenance or desuetude of fortifications (cf. Tom. i, pp. 156–157).
35 Material for a comparative study of the rural fortresses has, I understand, been collected by H. Stiesdal, who has already published examples after partial excavation (Analecta Romana Instituti Danici, ii, 1962, p. 63 ff.Google Scholar); others have been and are being included in the survey reports of PBSR.
36 Casale Marcigliana 909536.
37 E. Poeschel, Das Burgenbuch von Graubunden, 1929, includes all the towers in the Grisons.
38 S. Maria di Galeria 754550; Tom. iii, p. 48. The tower stands unusually far behind the ditch, and could be entered at man-height above the ground, both on that side and from the promontory; there may, therefore, have been an inner enclosing wall around the tower, as at Castel Morolo (Appendix II). Much stone must have been taken recently to build a villa, outside the ditch, and the causeway across it.
39 The round Torre di Lazzaroni, near the Ponte Milvio, has been explained as a thirteenth-century watch-tower (Tom. iii, p. 239, fig. 44).
40 Material collated from Tom. i, pp. 124, 184–185.
41 Campagnano di Roma 830634.
42 Stimigliano 904852.
43 Pomezia 975192; Tom. ii, p. 441, fig. 103.
44 E. Amadei, Le Torri di Roma, 1932, p. 25, pls. VI, VII.
45 There are, to my mind, insuperable objections to the current derivation of the Scottish towerhouse, whether from the Anglo-Norman keep or from the previous local type of residence, a spreading two-storeyed house like an English manor (S. Cruden, The Scottish Castle, pp. 97, 110, etc.). The most relevant tower-house, Hallforest, is presumed to date from just after 1309, or even earlier (W. Douglas Simpson, Earldom of Mar, p. 31, fig. 12, and Province of Mar, pl. 74; Sir A. Leith-Hay, Castles of Aberdeenshire, drawing at p. 14). Huge corbels supported a wooden floor midway between the ground and the lower vault, above which was a tall room up to near the spring of the roofing vault, at which level is a set of holes, either for a loft dependent on borrowed light, or for putlogs. In most tower-houses the lower vault covers the ground floor alone, and there are two or more wooden floors above it.
46 Maccarese 765430; A. Cervesato, The Roman Campagna, 1913, p. 74, lower photograph. The structure, of brick but with marble-lined doors and windows and marble corbels for balconies, relates the tower to one on the Isola Tiberina in Rome, An external stair to the second storey was carried on a brick projection, the doors and windows were placed without regard to defence, and there was only one vault, for roofing.
47 Tom. iii, p. 519, fig. 112; Ebh. ii. 2, figs. 510–512.
48 Cecchignola 911296; Tom. ii, p. 433, fig. 98; Martinori, E., Lazio Turrito, i, 1932, p. 184Google Scholar, drawing. In the corner beneath the tower is a latrine recess, still covered by a wooden beam; the shaft discharged obliquely through the wall. Cf. a double privy found in a tower by Stiesdal, (Analecta Romana Instituti Danici, ii, 1962, pp. 74–75Google Scholar).
49 M. R. Prete and M. Fondi, La Casa Rurale nel Lazio settentrionale e nell'Agro Romano, pls. V, IX.