Rocca Calascio
Castello di Rocca Calascio
Interesting facts
- The fortress was built only to house troops and was never meant as a noble residence; it never faced an actual siege or battle.
- It belonged to a chain of watchtowers that relayed signals across the mountains from the Apennines towards the Adriatic coast.
- In 1463 King Ferdinand I of Naples granted the castle to Antonio Todeschini Piccolomini, who adapted it for firearms and gave it its present shape.
- Sheep, not soldiers, made the area rich: by 1474 the villages of its barony owned more than 90,000 sheep, and wool became the local trade.
- In 1579 the Medici of Florence bought the castle together with the whole Barony of Carapelle for 106,000 ducats.
- The little village around the fortress emptied slowly over two centuries and was recorded as completely uninhabited in 1957.
- A wooden drawbridge once linked the village to the fortress; a simple stone ramp now takes its place.
- The octagonal church of Santa Maria della Pietร dates from 1596; according to legend, it marks where villagers drove off a band of brigands.
- In 1968 the director Romano Scavolini made the documentary Nel silenzio dei sassi about the depopulation of Rocca Calascio.
Why it is worth it
Rocca Calascio stands at about 1,460 metres on a bare ridge of the Gran Sasso massif, and is counted the highest fortress in the Apennines. From below it looks less like a building than an outcrop that has been squared off: a compact keep and a ring of walls in pale limestone, set against open sky, with the grassland of Campo Imperatore spreading beyond. At dawn and at dusk, when the low light picks out every course of stone and the valleys below fill with mist, it becomes one of the most photographed silhouettes in central Italy.
Its origins are military and modest. The site began as a single watchtower, generally dated to the tenth century, placed to watch over the high plateau and the valleys around it. In the thirteenth century a walled enclosure was built around it, reinforced with four round towers at the corners, and the lower courses of the walls were laid with noticeably larger blocks to resist undermining. The builders worked purely for defence: there is little decoration, only the geometry of tower, curtain and rock. A powerful earthquake in 1461 wrecked much of the fortress, and it was never fully rebuilt; what stands today is a partial ruin, consolidated but open to the wind.
A short way below the castle stands Santa Maria della Pietร , a small octagonal church of the seventeenth century whose domed shape makes a counterpoint to the hard lines above. The small hamlet of Rocca Calascio lies on the slope beneath the walls. Filmmakers have repeatedly used the place for its medieval austerity: it appears in Ladyhawke and The Name of the Rose, and in The American of 2010. The whole area lies within the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park.
Getting there
The castle belongs to the municipality of Calascio in the province of L'Aquila; the city of L'Aquila is about 24 km away in a straight line, and Abruzzo Airport (PSR) near Pescara about 42 km. By car, leave the A24 motorway at L'Aquila Est and follow signs through Barisciano and Santo Stefano di Sessanio to Calascio. Parking is limited near the upper village; from there a marked footpath of just over a kilometre climbs to the fortress in about half an hour. In busy periods a shuttle runs from Calascio to the hamlet.
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From the encyclopaedia
The Castle of Rocca Calascio is a mountaintop fortress or rocca in the municipality of Calascio, in the Province of L'Aquila, Abruzzo, Italy.
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