The Caetani castle of Ninfa stands near the lake, outside the walls of the vanished town that is now the Garden of Ninfa, in the territory of Cisterna di Latina. A first part was built in the twelfth century, in the time of the Frangipane; from 1308 it was enlarged by Pietro Caetani, who had bought Ninfa a few years earlier. When Ninfa fell, at the end of the fourteenth century, the castle was badly damaged; it served for years more as a prison and was then abandoned. In 1921 Gelasio Caetani began to restore the ruins, and in particular the tower and the town hall, to make a summer residence.
What to see
At first it was a tower with a masonry enclosure at its base. With the enlargement it became a square-plan structure, rotated by forty-five degrees, enclosed by walls with swallow-tail battlements and towers at the corners. The tower, fully restored, is square in plan, thirty-two metres high, with several loopholes and its top ringed by the same battlements.
Near the tower, against the curtain wall, a noble house was built, with a large hall and Gothic two-light windows from which one looked directly onto the town. In front of the castle a star magnolia grows today.
Visiting
The castle is seen during the visit to the Garden of Ninfa, which opens on set days: dates, bookings and tickets should be checked on the website of the Fondazione Roffredo Caetani.
Our editors' tip
The tower has a dark story. In 1447, when the castle served as a prison, an inmate killed a gaoler, and Onorato III Caetani as punishment had all the prisoners thrown from the tower, among them a deacon. For the Church this was inadmissible: to avoid excommunication, and with it the confiscation of his fiefs, Onorato had to have himself flogged in public.
