The first document naming the castle dates from 1237: Frederick II assigns the stronghold to Gentile da Petruno. Its origins are older, since some form of fortification must already have stood here when the Lombards founded their settlement on the hill in the 7th century, in the quarter still called Torricella. From the Angevins the property passed to the De Porcellis, who held it briefly, and then to a branch of the Caracciolo, a Neapolitan family that made it their permanent residence: in 1561 Marcantonio Caracciolo turned the keep into a prison, and his descendants remained lords of the fief until 1875, when the last heir, Maria Giulia Caracciolo, made a gift of the whole thing to baron Luigi Barracco.
What to see
The building covers more than three thousand square metres per floor and takes the shape of a great ship, drawn by the hill itself: hemmed in by the Pergola torrent and the Fiumicello, it juts into the valley like a peninsula. The way up was an open stairway that began at the Palazzo dell'Amministrazione below and reached the earthwork at the foot of the square tower. The marquises' apartments were on the third floor; the second and first held the servants, the storerooms and the armoury, with a wide cellar of large barrels. The round tower, by contrast, served for centuries as the gaol, shut by a gate and watched by armed guards.
In 1783 Litterio Caracciolo enlarged the castle and filled it with works of art; five years later, in 1788, he refounded the Monte del Santissimo Rosario, a charity that handed out free medicines to the poor and paid for four marriages a year, and he opened a Scuola Normale for children of every class. Little of that wealth survives: the furnishings were sold off in the twentieth century and the doorways were looted after the castle was abandoned following the earthquake of 1857. What stands today is the result of the restoration begun after the 1980 earthquake.
Visiting
The castle belongs to the municipality of Brienza, which is still restoring it while regenerating the medieval borgo spread out below the keep: you reach it by climbing through that, along the lanes. Until 1811 both castle and village belonged to the Principato di Citra, not to Basilicata. A document of 1625 describes rooms furnished in worked walnut, along with an oven, a laundry, a cistern and a private chapel.
Our editors' tip
Look for the Torricella quarter on the hill: that is where everything began, in the 7th century. And if someone tells you about Bianca da Brienza, the Bidibù of local legend, know that the story counts 365 rooms in the castle and a secret room 366, the treasure room, whose whereabouts only she and her maid knew.