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...on clear days one can see Castel del Monte,
the Hohenstaufen eyrie, shining yonder...
Norman Douglas, “Old Calabria”
AMONG THE MANY HUNTING-BOXES built by Frederick II, the last was Castel del Monte. You come closest to him here. It is the most beautiful and mysterious of all his strongholds.
The Emperor stamped his complex personality and his extra-ordinarily wide interests on this little castle. His fondness for mathematics could be seen in the plan, his love of nature in the decoration, and his vision of himself as the heir of the Caesars in the classical statues that adorned the rooms. He had a stone head brought from an ancient temple near Andria, with a bronze band fastened around its brow which bore the Greek inscription “on the calends of May at sunrise I shall have a head of gold.” He had it placed above the great entrance door that faces east. On the first day of May, the rays of the rising sun gilded this Imperial diadem, in the same way that the heads of Roman emperors had been wreathed in sun-rays on their gold coins.
There are innumerable theories about the design of Castel del Monte, many of them wildly fanciful – even one that it was based on the pyramid of Cheops – but there is general agreement that it was Frederick’s own creation. Begun about 1240, after his return from the Holy Land, its octagonal plan is not unlike the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Here, however, the octagon is carried to extremes, each point having an octagonal tower and the central courtyard eight sides. On both floors there are eight rooms (although only five of the towers have rooms, the others containing spiral-staircases) while in the courtyard there was an enormous octagonal bath, cut from a single block of white marble.
Although the plan was eastern, the decoration was French in inspiration. The interior retains Gothic fauns and other sylvan deities on the keystones of its vaulted rooms and windows. It still has white marble columns streaked with lavender and rust, crowned by silver grey capitals carved with vines, ivy and agave. A grey marble frieze linking the tops of the windows and running above the huge fireplace is almost intact. The mosaic that covered the vaults has gone, but traces of the octagonal floor-tiles give some idea of what the decoration must have been like in Frederick’s day. The standard of comfort was far in advance of its time. There were flushing water-closets in the towers and even a bathroom where the Emperor took a daily bath, the water coming through lead pipes from a cistern on the roof. Not too big, the rooms would have been well-heated in winter, deliciously cool in summer.
All Frederick’s palaces were sumptuously furnished, with a luxury almost undreamed of anywhere else in the Western Europe of his time. Silk hangings woven with gold thread, to clothe the walls and to curtain the windows, always travelled with him, servants going ahead to put them up. Huge cushions softened the stone benches around the walls, while the beds were made with silk or linen sheets. The marble table at which he dined after hunting was laid with a linen cloth and covered with gold and silver plate, and with Chinese porcelain which had been given to him by the Sultan of Cairo. Classical statues stood in niches in the walls; one of them was captured in his baggage at the siege of Parma, giving rise to a silly story that he worshipped idols. The tiled floors were carpeted by oriental rugs, light provided by candles in torcheres of rock crystal or enamelled bronze. There were lecterns for the books stored flat in cupboards along the walls.
Among these books was the “Toledoth Yeshua”, a pseudo-biography of Christ written during the eighth century by an anonymous Jew, who claimed that Jesus was a bastard begotten by a Roman soldier on a perfumer’s wife, and had learned magic in Egypt before setting out to lead Israel astray; arrested as a sorcerer, he was stoned before being hanged on the Passover – and then went down to hell where he was tormented in boiling mud. Possession of this luridly blasphemous work might seem to confirm the suspicions of some contemporaries that their strange, slightly sinister emperor had ceased to be a Christian, although this was not necessarily the case.
He displayed considerable learning in his own, less controversial book, the elegant “De Arte Venandi cum Avibus” (“The Art of Hunting with Birds”). Based partly on Arab treatises on falconry, but written largely from personal observation, this reveals the author’s deep love and understanding of hawks; significantly, the mews that housed them at Castel del Monte could only be reached through his bedroom. Sultans competed to present him with young Arabian birds of prey while he sent all the way to Iceland to buy his favourite gyrfalcons. He was the first European ruler to introduce a close season for game.
Frederick liked to hunt in the woods around Castel del Monte, using hounds or even cheetahs for ground game, although he usually preferred to fly his falcons. He was accompanied by his bastard sons and by scions of royal or noble families from all over Europe and the Middle East. During the winter he did not return until dusk, not stopping to eat since he took only one meal a day. In the evenings, he and his courtiers discussed the nature of the soul and the universe, listened to readings from Aristotle, or sang poems to music of their own composition.
After the death of the Emperor’s son, King Manfred, the rulers of the Regno seldom if ever came to Castel del Monte, although it was in working order as late as 1459. Then it was abandoned, and the great bronze doors removed. For centuries farmers were allowed to stable their animals there, brigands hiding in the towers. At last the Italian government bought the castle from the Carafa family in 1876 and a trickle of tourists began to visit it, including Augustus Hare and Janet Ross.
“It is a three hours drive (carriage with 3 horses, 20 francs) across the fruit-covered plain, sprinkled with small domed towers, upon which the figs are dried upon tiers of masonry round the domes”, reported Hare, who was staying at Trani. “From the point where the carriage-road comes to an end, it is an hour’s walk, over a wilderness covered with stones, where the sheep find scant subsistence in the short grass between the great tufts of lilies.” But for years few tourists came here.
An old custodian, living in a hut nearby, told Mrs. Ross how delighted he was to see her, “and said his life was very lonely, and that if it were not for Vigilante (his dog) he should not be able to bear it.” He dismissed tales of the place being haunted at night by the great Emperor as “only fit for poor peasants.”
Even so, “what recalled Frederick II vividly to my mind were the hawks, sailing about and shrieking sharply as they flew in and out of their nests in the walls of the castle”, wrote Janet. She admired the view from the roof, where she could see the entire coast from the Gargano down to Monopoli, with the white towns of Barletta, Trani and Bisceglie. Inland, she could see Andria, Corato and Ruvo: “We understood why the peasants call Castle del Monte ‘La Spia delle Puglie’ (the spy-hole of Puglia).”
Although the Emperor had many other homes in Apulia, Castel del Monte best preserves his brooding, brilliant majesty.