Castle

Testimony to the thousand-year history of the place

The castle of Gerace was built around the 8th century on pre-existing Roman fortifications, on a spur of rock separated from the city cliff, to which it was connected with a drawbridge. 

During the Norman conquest of southern Italy, Roger of Hauteville decided architectural renovations to the pre-existing Byzantine fortress, where he had a large reception room built, called the 'Sala di Mileto', which, according to tradition, was the scene of the pact of alliance with his brother Robert Guiscard. 

In the 13th century, the castle had undergone some restorations by order of Charles I, and hosted the Angevin garrison in Gerace during the siege carried out by Peter of Aragon.

 Two centuries later, precisely during the Aragonese period, it was among the fortresses visited by the Duke of Calabria, Alfonso, and it was perhaps in those years that a cylindrical tower with a scarp base was built on the south-eastern side of the fortress, similar to the one present in Borgo. 

During the Spanish viceroyalty, within the first half of the 16th century, the Marquis Consalvo II de Cordoba had new works carried out on the building, as demonstrated by the coat of arms still visible on the 15th century tower. 

In the seventeenth century the existence of a frescoed oratory still in use in the castle is documented and the eroded stone shield of the Grimaldi Serra family attests to the completion of some works. In the following century the scholar Giovanni Attilio Arnolfini, in his famous work on the fiefdoms of princess Grimaldi, already describes the fortress as being in a state of ruin.