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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, the Norman castle of Monteserico
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The Norman Casle of Monteserico
Dear readers, the castle that we
are going to talk about in this article is a small castle, so it is not well
known except for a few historic facts that have happened there, or around this
castle in the past. So I have thought that in order to get a larger amount of
people interested in castles and their history, we have borrowed this link of
Leeds Castle, so that you could enjoy this mixed reading about castles, so
anyone that likes to read this hub can view it just by clicking on the link.
But let me make this clear the
post that I am writing here under in this blog, it is going to be our own small
castle of Monteserico, as I have said I would like the public to be interested
in the castles and the castles history and if they are they can read both
articles. But be warned the castle of Monteserico is only a very small castle
compared to Leeds Castle, but it has got its own history, which we are trying
to write the best way we could.
The castle of Monteserico
Welcome to our article, ‘The
castle of’
We could have called this hub,
The Norman castle of Monteserico, since The Normans first they fought around
this castle to conquer it and then used it to run their conquest in this part
of Southern Italy around 1040 AD, in second place we could have called it, ‘the
castle of Federico II’, since he used this castle as sit for the “magister
massarium Apuliae” while he was master of Southern Italy around 1220- 1250, but
because it has many names and many owners, today we all call it the castle of
Monteserico, because that is how is called the zone of southern Italy. So, let
us talk about the castle of Monteserico, in Genzano di Lucania
First of all we
would like to explain to our readers the following situation: Strange as it may
seem the town of Genzano di Lucania has two castles, one is in the town itself
and another one is in the country, the castle that is in the town has been
modified and today is used as the Town Hall (Municipio), but we are not going
to talk about the castle in the town today, we have just mentioned this to
explain to our readers the town of Genzano, as this involves both castles; so,
today we are going to talk about the castle in the country and we call this
castle, Monteserico castle; here we need to say that the name of “Monteserico”
in Genzano, not only refer to this castle but it also refer to the county
itself; in fact this name would cover about three quarter of Genzano territory.
Monteserico castle
is a very old castle that a long time ago had a small town or village of its
own, some people believe that the Normans built it, but most people don’t agree
with it and have other explanations of how this castle came about before the
Normans, and the Normans may have modified it and used this castle, while they
were ruling over their conquest in Southern Italy, we will talk about this
again as we continue with this castel story.
Now if we connect
what historically is known today, we will soon see that this castle of
Monteserico was there before the modern Genzano came into existence, we say the
modern Genzano because there is some evidence that Genzano existed in the Roman
times, as it is mentioned in the archive of Potenza that two martyrs Donato and
Secondo were executed in Genzano around 258 AD, for more details see our hub Genzano di Lucania history, therefore the town
of Genzano existed even then but for some reasons it is not motioned much as if
it did not exist until later on as our story will show.
Now let us go back
to talk about Monteserico castle, this castle is/was completely independent
from the town of Genzano di Lucania, in fact the modern town of Genzano seem to
have come into existence well after the Norman invasion of Southern Italy. We
are saying this because even though today Monteserico Castle is situated in the
territory of Genzano, the founder of the existing Genzano came from this
castle, history tells us that this castle is the castle that the queen Aquilina
Sancia lived in before Genzano town was built or perhaps it would be more
correct to say rebuilt and Aquilina Sancia is said to be the founder of
Genzano, today we know that it is not true, because there has been a very old
Genzano before.
Anyhow nobody knows
exactly who started to build this castle of Monteserico, and it has many
stories about its origin, what we know today is that this was one of the main
castles that the Normans used to rule over Southern Italy in the beginning of
the second millennium, and that in this part of southern Italy there have been
many wars and this castle has had many owners, another historically well-known
owner was “Frederick II” about 1194-1250, check the links below.
Frederick II. of Hohenstaufen - YouTube
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor - Wikipedia, the free ...
Frederick the Second, 1194-1250 -
Google Books
Some other owner of the castle we will try to
mention in our text when we write our next posts. Anyhow today it happens that
this castle has been restored to safe keep the heritage of this part of
Southern Italy; but it is a very quiet country place, it seems almost forgotten
except for the people that work around in the fields that produce some of the
best durum wheat that is used to make pasta and other wheat products. However,
if one is keen to know this part of Italian history one can learn something
about it from these posts here and also from our hub The
castle of, and then try to visit the place preferably during spring or summer.
I believe that we have said enough in
this post, we hope to see you in our next post, about the castle of Monteserico,
see you soon.
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Genzano it story
The Norman castle of Monteserico
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, Monteserico historic events in brief
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Genzano it story
The Norman castle of Monteserico
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, Monteserico historic events in brief
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Some of our hub links
