THE HISTORY OF BRANCACCIO CASTLE
This baronial castle, characterized by mighty walls and built on the ancient ruins of a castle owned by the Colonna family, was built in the 10th century on a tuff spur that juts out into the center of a valley, which provides it with a wall. It was restored and expanded in the following centuries.
Purchased by the Colonna family in 1321, it was later controlled by different families, including the Orsini family, Cardinal Santacroce, the Poli family, the Barberini family and Cardinal Carlo Pio of Savoy who restored it in 1655. After the death of the Cardinal, the castle was abandoned for about two centuries until the 19th century (1840-1855) when it was restored again by the Dukes of Uceda and his wife Bernardina Fernandez de Velasco, without losing its powerful magnificence.
The building, which forms the original core of the fortified village of San Gregorio da Sassola, is characterised by massive walls crowned by battlements, a drawbridge, a row of crossed windows on the first floor and a quadrangular tower. The well-preserved drawbridge, under which passes the road that leads into the town of San Gregorio da Sassola, meets the scenic medieval complex to be explored on foot. On the side facing the medieval part of the city, inside the castle walls, there is a large courtyard, with another building arranged perpendicular to the rear facade of the main building.
The last private owners of the castle were the princes of the Brancaccio family who finally left in 1899. They added a tower, a large guest house and an arch that joins the two buildings and leads down into the medieval city. As was popular practice at the time, these additions and renovations were designed in a pseudo-medieval style. The ground floor windows, for example, were replaced by Guelph cross windows, and the old bell tower of the chapel was transformed into a turret.
Inside, the rooms are decorated with a cycle of frescoes from the 16th century, attributed to Federico Zuccari (who later also worked on the Villa d'Este in Tivoli) and from the 18th century, attributed to the neoclassical painter Andrea Appiani. In some rooms, the paintings show the history of the Brancaccio family. Other rooms are decorated with grotesque motifs, others with landscapes. Some of the ceilings are frescoed with mythological scenes, including an allegory of Sacred and Profane Love. In 1989, the Brancaccio family left the castle to the municipality of San Gregorio da Sassola, as they had already done with Villa Brancaccio, now a public park.
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