Visit to the Castle

Going through the first gate of admission, built from the Prades family around 1400, because so for strategic reasons, we can see an imposing flight of stairs coatstep on the right by a massive line of battlements carried out by the Amato family in 1600 and on the left by a high and sumptuous building called “Ala Prades”.
The latter is characterized by three mullioned windows under which we note three windows with a only one opening (from the inside they correspond to the stables) which surpass overlook slits or embrasures from where they spilled - on possible attackers - boiling oil, liquefied pitch, lighted sulphur or aimed arrows if the enemy where farther away.
The basis of the rock, covered in steep mode is called shoe: walled up on the rock there is a bas relief which represents a hand that supports in balance the scale pans under which we can see the initials of the Latin verse of the Wisdom book’s that says: “Diligite iustitiam vos qui iudicatis terram” d.i.v.q.i.t. (Loved the justice you who judge on land).
In 1430 Don Giovanni Bernardo Cabrera, who was an officer of the Allfonso il Magnanimo’s Army, obtained “the right to administer the Civil and Penal Justice for the states of Caccamo, Alcamo and Calatafimi.
The imposing flight finishes on a landing, where we find a grand gate in wrought iron ‘600 with an undoubted romantic stile in testimony of the fact that the history of the castle is not made only of struggles, rebellion and sieges, but it is also a place of love.
After the gate of admission, we find a court-yard called “of the horsewoman”.
On the left we find the stables, with the original pavement, where there are small canals which drain surplus liquid and at the bottom a fine watering place formed from a basin stone of 1400.
From the stables we enter the great cistern and a little room that is situated at the basis of a tower, once used as an ossuary. These places are under the Hearing Hall of Prades, transformed by Prince De Spuches in the second of ‘800, in a tower called Gibellina, from the arabic “gibel”, that is “turned towards the towan”. The building of 1400 on right of the gate is the guard room, from where guards keep watch.
In front of the theatre there is a passage without a gate formed by two archs one above the over: the lower round arch dates back to 1600, the higher an ogive arch, to the Chiaramonte’s period (1300).
On the ground, at the basis of the passage, there is a block of stone with the date of 1776 incised.
Leaving behind us the romantic court called “at tongs”, we find on the right the Court Chapel and an embattled romantic terrace from where towards North-East we can discern the promontory of Capo Zafferano. We are exatly at the basis of the ancient Torre Maestra, with a lower water tank, that rose for 75 meters in hight but was unfortunately destroyed during the earthquake of 1823.
On the outside wall we can see the holes used to make the excess of water flow down, and on the inside the tower contained seven water tanks and also a windmill.
A popular myth tells that during a siege, enemies, not being able to conquer the castle, renounced the sieges, sure of being able to force tha besieged to surrender themselves for hunger.
On the contrary besieged, to demonstrating their self-governmente and the possibility of survival, dropped down from tha wall at the assailings, buttermilk curd, fresh chees at their enemies, in demostration of the fact that in the Castle existed, workshops for the manufacture of arms and arrows, but also the seven water thanks, the mill and the warehouses able to contain a large quantity of wheat and oven to cook bread. At this moment the assailers renounced the siege.
It is necessary to remember that, when the siege lasted a long time, all the people retired in the contiguous fortress at the Castle and the women, after having offered their help to the community, dedicated themselves to the working of original and artistic packsaddles of leather and wool, which up to 1960 which was boast made the handcraft of Caccamo a reason of touristic interest .
Taking again our visit to the Castel turning the right to the embattled terrace, we find a room surmonted by an ogive arch Tufaceous, realized in 1500 by the Henriquez which represents the entrance to the prisons. Immediately out the left we can see a brickwork in clay jar mould, used for the preparation of boiling - pitch to use aginst the enemies. Descending the stairs, after a small garden, on a wall pointing West, we find the doors of access to the prisons. An immediate passage from the light to the dark: low roofs, couches in masonry, rooms with damp and blackened walls, drawings of churches, bell-towers, horses, knives and arms. And then a series of writings one of which very true: with art and deceit we can live half a year, with deceit and art we can live on the other part side.
Among the cells, the biggest and most important was able to shelter six prisoners; the terrifying one was plunged completely in the dark, 1 mt. wide by 1 mt., with a little seat in masonry, it kept the prisoner walled up alive inside it.
In the middle of the court’s prinsons, we can see a pit where the prisoners to be tortured where shup up.
At the end of the visit of the prinsons, we turn towards the third entrance, provided of a drawbridge and a moat, which lets us into the central and residential corp of the castle.
Crossing the entry, we are in a little atrium called “wolf’s mouth” where we can see interesting remains of the castle history.
A tombstone on the right remembers the discovery of seven jars full of medicinal oil: “the oil hid in the year 1673 in these two handled amphorae at prince Don Antonio will as which once had the older it became the more efficacious it would be to if used by people who made a double sign of the cross with it”.
Don Antonio Amato saw in a dream that in his castle there where numerous oil-jars. On a waking, very frightened of what he had dreamed, he ordered the excavations in the adjoining garden and he really found seven big jars wih dried oil.
Of the jars discovered, today anly one remains.
Another tombstone smaller than the first, contains an always real and very significant inscription: “in the good times we all have friends. When the good times are over the frinds disappear”.
In front of it we see the Caccamo coat-of-arms, formed by a horse head and the Triscelon (the Trinacria).
In 1641, Don Giovanni Alfonso Henriquez de Cabrera, Count of Modica and Lord of Sicily on that occasion, citizen of Caccamo, gave them 3.500 scudi. Two years later, the viceroy on his return to Palermo from Messina, stopped in Caccamo on the 12 of November 1643, in sign of gratitude for the welcome received, raised Caccamo to the rank of city, title that some years before, had been assigned by Federico II the Swabian and when the existing coat of arms had been given the new coat-of-arms was given that is the actual. At the same time first citizen was attributed the appellative of the “Magnificient” and at the civic administration was confered the right to make convoy, in the official manifestation by two mace-bearers and by foru constables.
During this period, Caccamo a significant turning point underwent, changing from a simple rural village, into a splendid small town.
The living quarters spread beyond the ancient town-walls and it was enriched by numerous monuments with a considerable and further development of the already rich artistic patrimony.
On the right corner of the vestibule, there is a stairs case digged in the rock, which goes into the underneath the main court used by the servants and for the storage food: we think that this passage must have been the old entrance into the castle. Going through another high masonry arch, on the left we enter a large rectangular atrium with a cobwebbed flooring able to contain hundreds of people and where the Masters of the Castle kept the parades in war time. In this big courtyard we can see stone horse rings and traces of a clay piping system which collected the rain waters from the roofs to convoy into the water tanks, we can also see the rests of some oven.
The main entry is costituted by a main woodden door, on either sides of which there are two columns of stone and above it, besides the Amato’s family coat of arms, there is also a latin inscription which recalls the defeat of the Angevin in 1302 and enlogizes the Duke Don Antonio Amato for having enlarged and restored the Castle: “Host, this castle, where once the French grew pale, which had the almost been consumed by the unrestroinable greediness of time, Don Antonio Amato, Prince of Galati, Duke of Asti, Lord of Caccamo and soldier of Alacantara for his magnanimity, restored where it was falling down, where it was oper he closed, where it was falling down, where it was open he closed, where it was destroyed he lifted up again it, where was incomplete, he increased it, built around some fortifications”.
Crossing the main entrance, we enter in the arms hall or cospiracy hall, now undressed, and just at 1974, decorated with arms, daggers, pistols, bows, arrows, helmets, harquebuses and old armours. The hall, the largest of the castle, faces towards the Terravecchia quarter, with two large balconies in stone across where we admire the great mass of the Cathedral of norman age and his high bell-tower. The roof of the hall is costituted with fine rests of wooden - beam ceilings of 1600, in part restored in 1800 by the De Spuches’s family. This large place is called “the hall of conspiracy” because, for the tradition, it was here that in 1160, under leadrship of Matteo Bonello, the Sicilians Barons gathered against King Guglielmo I called “the Malo”. But the King made the capture at treason and closed him in a dark prison, then was capture at treason and closed him in a dark prison, then was blinded and killed between the most cruel tortures.
In front of the main entry we find two niches where inside we find two chalk statues, in the middle we can see an open ogive arch that permit to entry in a place completely remade: a tower with a lower rain-tank. From the hall, we go towards the west entering the door of another large room: the sitting-room, called also “The fire-place room”.
In this room we find a window with five opening that reproduced the Chiaramonte’s coat-of-arms. It’s a window in arabic style (Moresque).
The contiguous room at the fire-place room is a bedroom with majolica’s floor that reproduces the originary and a vault with chack’s stuccoes from the beginning of 1800.
The frescoes can be admired inside the bath-room contiguos to the bedroom. Across another place, of which the walls are in stone, we entry in a large terrace that overlook the whole valley of the San Leonardo river and of the artificial lake that was obtained with the barage of the bed river through the Rosamarina’s dam.
From this position we overlook an immense part of territory from where we can admire a spectacular view that space from Solunto to Capo Zafferano to Monte Cane and to Rocca Busambra, while toward South the Vicari’s Castle and the Monte Rotondo with the little valley of the Mitinia.
In the Middle Ages the importance of the Caccamo’s Castle, rised at the strategic level. On this large terrace make full relief a large triumphal arch, formed by two arcades and it seems really that in this place happened grue somes spectacles: the hanging of important persons.
Less than half century ago, in the little room, situated in the more Northern part of the terrace, have found a sheaf of rusty swords, two big wood shields arcobel and in the middle was fixed vertically a nail high about 15 cm.
After many reflections and suppositions, they have established that the shields was instruments of torture: in fact on the nails had fixed the excecuted heads that where showed publically to frighten people.
Runing over again the way contrary and passed the arms hall, we pass in the opposite side.
The first in the dining - room with bare walls and with frescoes of ‘600 nearly ruined, with mosaic flooring and the lacunar ceiling late Renaissance.
Before that the Castle was sold from the Spuches’s family to the Regione Siciliana (1963) both the dining room and the other halls were furnished with old furnitures of esteemed manufactures, paintings, frescoes, furnishings that enriched the decorative beauty of the halls.
There are also called of the guest-rooms a room used as a bedding room with near a chapel for hosts with a nice trapdoor in the middle, used to eliminate unwelcome visitors.
From the bedding-room we come at the terrace sayd of “view” from where is possible to see a large side of the town and the area of Monte Rotondo; from the terrace we reach other lodgings totally rebuilt with relatives baths.
Between two iron stairs we arrive at the rustic places at garret represented by the under roofs, from where we enter into a little terrace that was used like an area of sighting.
We finish so the visit to the old biggest manor-house of Sicily, whose citadel was formed form the Terravecchia village and was closed by an embattled fence with four doors.
Castle and citadel are defended with four towers to resist an enemy attack:
- the Byrsarone tower under the extreme rocky spur connected with the Castle by a secret underground passage:
- the Square tower, that was demolished in 1627 to make space at the increase of the San Giorgio Martire’s Dome;
- the bell’s tower, today belfry of the same Dome and at least the tower of let, of the SS. Annunziata Church, used also like a belfry.


 

 

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