The Castle

The building, the heart of Castelbuono: the Ventimiglia castle.
Anno incarnati verbi MCCCXVI Ind. XV Regnante gloriosissimo domino nostro rege Friderico rege Sicilie anno regni sul XXI. Nos Franciscus comes Vintimili Yscle maioris et Giracii dominus utriusque Petralie incepimus hoc Costrum Belvidiri de Ypsigro in Christi nomine edificare.

(“The year of the Word made flesh 1316, reigning the glorious Federico of Aragona king of Sicily, we, Francesco count of Ventimiglia, of Yscle mayor and Geraci and Lord of the two Petralie, we have started to build the Castle Belvedere of Ypsigro in the name of Christ”).

Francesco I Ventimiglia started to build the castle on the hill called San Pietro of Ypsigro, from where the appellation “The castle of the good air”, from where the name Castelbuono. In the structure was included a Byzantine “fortress”.

During the XVII century were strong transformations for abilities needs, because some Ventimiglia families moved from Palermo; it never had strategical finalities, for its geographic position.

It is not simple to identify he original arhitecture; we received it with features of Swabian-Norman-Arabian composition: the “cubic” shape calls to mind the Arabian architecture, the “square towers” - even if are incorporated with the ones of the front of the building behind they were isolated – they reflect the Norman architecture, the “cylindrical tower” shows forms of Swebian architecture.

The “swallow tailed ghibellines crenellation” was demolished in 1820, damaged by the earthquake  that struck all the Madonie and, gravely, Castelbuono. A “subterranean gallery “ communicated with Saint Francesco church (1322), in the upper part of the city. Secrets stairs were discovered into the thickness of the big walls comunicating with the floors.

The rooms in the ground-floor and in the subsoil refer to the feudal domination: narrow cells for the prisoners of high crimes, common rooms for the prisoners of minor crimes. It's time resistant the fifteenth-century wooden ceiling decorated with multicoloured chimerical figures, that is based on artistically notched “shelfs”. Being vicar of Sicily the Count Francesco II Ventimiglia the king Federico III of Aragona lived in the castle.

In the Palatine Chapel, decorated by the brothers Giuseppe and Giacomo Serpotta in 1683, is kept the urn with the relic of the skull of Saint Anne, Patron saint of Castelbuono; the urn is the pedistal of the sculptural silver bust of the Saint (1521). The artistic wooden “Chorus” (1760) is an handmade piece of Domenico Coco, sculptor of Castelbuono. 

The Ventimiglia castle was for six centuries the residence of the notable family. The Municipality bought it at the beginning of the XX century, in 1920. Thanks to the presence of the Palatine Chapel and the relic of Saint Anna that have motivate the continuous interventions to the castle, the castle survived the years, and the events that, sometimes, undermine its stability.

The structural restoration projected and financed in the 80's and realized in the last five years of the century, gave back to the fruition the most part of the building, and the archaeological researchs, unfortunately not complete yet, offered the elements for a second-reading of the history of the castle and of our community, in its origins and in its secular evolution.