Normanno-Svevo Holy Spirit

About

The Norman king Roger II builds the castle in 1131 on the site of earlier Byzantine structures. William I "the Bad" later damages it through harsh intervention, but Frederick II reclaims and rebuilds it between 1233 and 1240. In the second half of the 13th century, Charles of Anjou reinforces the castle's north wall, which the sea then washes directly against. In the 16th century, Isabella of Aragon and her daughter Bona Sforza wrap the Norman-Swabian core in new bastioned walls built to withstand artillery, turning the whole complex into a fortress. That Norman-Swabian core survives today: a trapezoidal plan around a central courtyard, with three tall, rusticated corner towers. Inside, the castle now houses a Gipsoteca, a gallery of plaster casts that sculptors Pasquale Duretti and Mario Sabatelli made in 1911, reproducing the sculptural decoration of Apulia's major cathedrals and monuments for a regional ethnographic exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of Italian unification. Set at the edge of the old town near the port and the cathedral, the castle today serves as a museum.