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...immense, majestic and well built...
Giovanni Battista Pacichelli, “Il Regno di Napoli in Prospettiva”
ANOTHER GREAT FEUDAL FIEF in central Apulia was Francavilla Fontana. Unlike the Acquaviva and the Caracciolo, its lords, the Imperiali, were Northerners by origin, Genoese bankers. They also spent far more time at Naples. It is possible that their enormous wealth made for an easier relationship with the locals than at Conversano or Martina Franca, since they did not have to depend so much on feudal dues for their income.
The foundation of Francavilla Fontana was, once again, the story of finding a wonder-working icon. In 1310, Philip of Anjou, Prince of Tàranto, was hunting when he saw a stag kneeling by a fountain in a valley and shot at it; to his amazement, the arrow turned round in flight and came back to him. He had the valley searched, a small grotto being discovered which contained a portrait of the Madonna and Child, “painted in the Greek manner”. The Prince built a church and, to encourage people to settle around it, granted land to all comers, free from taxes for ten years, giving the settlement the name of Francavilla or ‘Free Town’. Many settlers were attracted by the miracles which were worked by the icon. The most famous was on 24 January 1520, when a severe frost and then snow threatened to destroy the crops; everyone prayed before the Madonna of the Fountain and, on rising from their knees, they found that every plant, every leaf and stem, was free from frost or snow. Given walls in 1364 and a castle in 1450, Francavilla Fontana eventually passed to the Borromeo. Cardinal Carlo Borromeo sold it in 1571, to feed the poor of Milan.
The purchaser was Davide Imperiali, who already possessed vast estates near Genoa and also in Spain, besides a huge banking for-tune. In the same year, 1571, he equipped four galleys at his own expense and took them to fight the Turks at Lepanto. As a reward, King Philip II made him Marquess of Oria. Davide’s son, Michele, acquired the lordships of Avetrana and Massafra in 1647, together with the title ‘Prince of Francavilla’.
Pacichelli is curiously unenthusiastic about the Princes of Francavilla, although he admits that their fief is one of the largest in the realm. However, he admires the wealth of the surrounding countryside – its grain, wine, oil, almonds and “other delights”, remarking also on the town’s “commodious, white-washed houses”. He visited it when Michele II was its Prince. This Michele, who reigned from 1676 until 1724, rebuilt the castle as a palace, one of the largest in Apulia. The basic plan remained unchanged, four square towers at each angle and crenellated battlements, but the interior was modernised, the famous Neapolitan architect Ferdi-nando Sanfelice designing the double staircase which leads to the great hall where the Imperiali displayed their collection of paintings. There were superb guest-rooms, and a small theatre. There was also Cardinal Renato Imperiali’s library, one of the best in Europe, which was open to the public.
The duomo at Francavilla, housing the miraculous icon, is large and Baroque, rebuilt in 1743 after an earthquake. Henry Swinburne describes it as “new, gay and well lighted; but so stuccoed, festooned and flowery, that the whole decoration is mere chaos.” He says the plans were drawn in Rome, but muddled up by a local architect. It has paintings by the prolific Domenico Carella, a native of the town. Among them is “Il Caduto del Fulmine” (“The Fall of the Thunderbolt”), commemorating the drama of Palm Sunday 1779. Six hundred of Francavilla’s leading citizens met in the church to discuss public affairs, the debate growing so heated that the Archpriest had to beg them “to respect the house of God.” A certain Angelo Cosimo Candita standing near the main door was particularly noisy. Suddenly a thunderbolt struck the church, killing Candita. His horrified friends commissioned the painting, which still hangs over the main doorway.
Andrea II (1724–38) was a benevolent ruler who gave the town a school and an orphanage. His son Michele III, fifth and last prince, spent most of his time in Naples where he rented the Cellamare Palace, entertaining seven or eight hundred guests a week; among them was Casanova, who commented that “this amiable and magnificent Prince... preferred the love of Ganymede to Hebe.” Even so, he made the steward of his Apulian estates build villages, schools and workshops, and turn scrub into farmland.
When Swinburne visited Francavilla Fontana, Prince Michele had told its citizens to make him welcome, with “honours sufficient to turn the head of a plain English gentleman.” Don Domenico, formerly Clerk of the Chamber to the Princess, showed him the town, a mob accompanying them throughout. He thought the houses “showy”, but admitted the main street would be “handsome even in a capital city.” As for the palace, “The apartments are spacious; but, as the owner has been absent above fourteen years, everything wears the face of neglect and decadency.” He gives a patronising account of what must have been the town’s most prized diversion:
I was left to take my afternoon nap, and in the evening entertained with the tragedy of Judith and Holofernes, acted by the young people of the town, in a theatre belonging to the castle. Their rude accent, forced gestures, and strange blunders in language, rendered their dismal drama a complete farce. When the heroine murdered the general, the whole house shook with thundering bursts of applause; the upper part of his body was hidden by the side scenes; the lower parts lay on a couch upon the stage, and in the agonies of death were thrown into such convulsions, kickings and writhings, as melted the hearts and ravished the souls of the attentive audience. Judith then came forward, and repeated a long monologue, with her sword in one hand, and a barber’s block dripping with blood, in the other. Never was a tragedy-queen sent off the stage with louder or more sincere acclamations.
Although the Imperiali family was very far from being extinct in Apulia, when Michele III died in 1782 he had no heirs within the fourth degree of consanguinity. The entire fief of Francavilla Fontana therefore reverted to the Crown, together with his other great castles and estates at Manduria, Massafra, Oria and Messagne. Despite having spent so much time away at Naples, he was deeply mourned. When visiting Oria, de Salis heard that Prince Michele had been a man of “rare knowledge and qualities”, who by his kindness had doubled the population of his estates, encouraging many peasants to leave their former lord and settle on his land. But even in 1789, only seven years after the Prince’s death, under the Crown’s management the Imperiali estates had begun to be less prosperous. Due to being run from Naples by bureaucrats who never set foot in Apulia, “the population had dropped by a third, the newly cultivated ground had deteriorated and the manufacturing industries were completely exhausted.”
Francavilla Fontana was very badly bombed in 1944, losing many of the historic “showy” houses next to the duomo. Nevertheless, the main street admired by Swinburne two centuries ago remains much as it was during his visit; the palace has been restored, and the little theatre where he saw the tragedy of Judith and Holofernes is still there.
Among the other great houses that once belonged to the Imperiali Princes of Francavilla Fontana, the palace at Manduria also survives intact, although broken up into flats, a bank and a restaurant. The castles at Massafra and Messagne have been restored. Best preserved of all, however, is the beautifully maintained castle at Oria, which since 1933 has belonged to the Counts Martini Carissimo.