The Castello Caldoresco is Vasto's fortress, on a promontory overlooking the coast. It was built in 1439 by Giacomo Caldora, who had just become Marquis of Vasto, on the remains of an earlier fortification that already included a square tower; the work was entrusted to the Sienese engineer Mariano di Jacopo, known as Taccola. It had a square plan around a central courtyard, following a model of Swabian-Angevin military architecture. In 1464 it withstood for three months the siege by the army of Ferdinand I of Aragon against Antonio Caldora, Giacomo's son; at the end of the siege the people of Vasto themselves partly demolished it.
What to see
With the arrival of the d'Avalos, at the end of the fifteenth century, the castle, which stood at one of the weakest points of the walls, was strengthened with almond-shaped bastions that some studies attribute to the Sienese Francesco di Giorgio Martini. Today it consists of four wings around the courtyard, with bastions on three of the four corners; the west and north fronts keep original parts, despite the heavy additions of the nineteenth century.
In 1816 it was bought by the landowner Salvatore Palmieri, who commissioned the architect Nicola Maria Pietrocola to turn it into a residence: the result was Palazzo Palmieri, with its Neoclassical façade on piazza Gabriele Rossetti.
Visiting
The castle is private property and not open to the public: it is seen from outside, from the square and the surrounding streets.
Our editors' tip
After 1605 the castle, ceded to the town, served as a court and a prison; in 1701 it was bought back by Cesare Michelangelo d'Avalos, who feared a punitive expedition by the viceroy over his part in the Macchia conspiracy, and he rebuilt the towers in the form they have today. In the nineteen-eighties it appeared on a 1400-lire stamp in the «Castles of Italy» series.
