Thursday, February 4, 2016

More history about Monteserico

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, mre history about Monteserico
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Imagining old history of Monteserico
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This is the castle of Monteserico today, during its history this castle was once a Norman castle, famous owners and rulers; Robert the Guiscard duke of Southern Italy, then came Frederic II and many others. We need to say that around this castle there have been many wars, there is even a large hill called, Serra della battaglia (the hill of the battle)
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One of the most recent and famous people that has owned and lived for a short while in this castle was Lydia Borelli; she lived in this castle for a while, perhaps she wanted some quiet place to live after her very successful carrier as an actress. Here under I am posting a link where you can read lots about her life.



Lyda Borelli - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia









Imagining old history of Monteserico
Now, let us just imagine how this small castle might have been built in the first place, today nobody seems to know who, when or the real reason this castle has been built, but from what we have found we have formed some possible ideas of its history, so let us say how we see this castle story.
In the beginning there must have been people of this region living in the caves where today stands the castle, they could have been local shepherd or perhaps other outside people, anyhow everything has to have a beginning, some of these people could have originated from Greece or somewhere else, they came up the valley of the river Bradano and settled here in Monteserico and also in the town of Genzano, since in Genzano even today there is this chasm called the Greek chasm, of course this is very early in history.
Then came the Roman Era with their conquest of southern Italy and then most of the known world, so, the Romans ruled over this part of Italy for a very long time; during that time some of the Roman leader may have started a holiday villa or just a building to live in and rule over the countryside, that is what the Roman did best, they usually would build something wherever they went so that they would be able to run that part of their conquest easily and at the same time bring civilization to the people in that region. So we believe that since the Roman times there has been a building there that some Roman landlord used and looked after, it might also have grown and modified many times.
When the Western Roman Empire collapsed around in 475-76 AD, when the German Odovacer deposited Romulus Augustulus, and in affect became king of Rome.
After the fall of the Roman Empire there wasn’t any real peace in Italy, so people had to try to protect themselves the best way they could, this in affect made people build castles, so this villa or whatever was built in Monteserico started to take the form of a small castle.
The first time that a sort of a castle or fort is mentioned is in the 800 AD. You see there were many wars so Monteserico castle and other castles in this part of the region became fortified forming a line of defence against the enemy; please note that this is before the Norman came to southern Italy, so when Robert Guiscard came to this part of Italy the castle was already there, as we can see from some important battles that happened in those times. 

Some known Monteserico history
Let us mention the owner that we know or we think we know that have owned the castle of Monteserico, So, let us start with famous owners like Robert Guiscard duke of southern Italy in 1047 of Apulia and Calabria and later on the Two Sicilies etc.  Born 1016 died 1085
Another famous one is Fredrick II that owned this castle, after Frederick II, 1194-1250, of course it is not easy here to follow a chain of event, but we know that these castles and other holdings always changed hand, it is said in history that there was a Roberto D’Angio who had married a Sancia he donated the castle to a family member del Bosco who saw husband of Aquilina Sancia, and when he died Aquilina Sancia became owner of Monteserico.
From Aquilina Sancia it was inherited from her daughter Giacoma Rachele who married Roberto San Severino the count of Carignano and Terlizzi, and then it was passed to the family Dentice delle Stelle under the queen Giovanna and the to the Ruffo.
During this time Monteserico had also a small town or suburb, but around 1400-1430 it slowly vanished, there was not an explanation why this happened but it happened.                   
After Aquilina Sancia there were the Sanseverino who had the castle. After that in 1603 was a Genoese Grimaldi, in 1613 was the Doria, at the end of 1700 was some descendents of the Sancia family and after that was abandoned.
It was bought from the Baron Dell’Agli-Certi the 30-01-1857, and then it was sold to the Cafieri the 30-03-1875 but by then it was too run down to live in.
After world war 1 the tenant Gardini bought a portion of the land from the Cafieri and the castel of Monteserico, it was used for holiday or resting place from this actress: Lyda Borelli (22 March 1884 – 2 June 1959) was an Italian actress ofcinema and theatre. She was born in Genoa, and died in Rome. Her career in theatre started when she was a child, acting on stage with Paola Pezzaglia in the French drama I due derelitti.
There might be other things to add but I don’t know what else to say at the moment, except that this military castle of Monteserico is a small fortress that has got many unknown stories, some of them are love stories and some of them are war stories; whether we will be able to tell these stories one day we do not know.
Anyhow, we hope that we have told you this story of Monteserico castle for everybody to read, but it has also been especially written for those people that come from Genzano, so that they can remember their native town and our Monteserico castle.
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Dear readers, we have written several hubs about the town of Genzano di Lucania, we have written some history also of this town and the castle of Monteserico, of course there are several other things that could be said about the past, but today we have to start to look at the future, because there are things happening in southern Italy, so we are going to look at the modern history making around these places, you see I like to forecast what could happen around these places, just looking at what is happening just now. So let us look at what could happen in out next post about Italy modern history. I hope that I will be able to write just one long post and then we will go back to tell you our own personal story. So see you in our next post, Italy modern history.