Between 1522 and 1527 Count Enrico Pandone had the walls of his castle frescoed with the finest horses of his own stud: no coats of arms, no battles, just animals portrayed one by one. The choice says a good deal about the man, and about the building itself, born for war and ending up as the showcase of a Renaissance lord. Enrico did not enjoy it for long: he betrayed Charles V of Habsburg and was beheaded, and the fief moved on to other houses, among them the Lannoy.
The fortress was already centuries old, standing on a site chosen to control the entrance to the upper Volturno valley. The earthquake of 1349 brought it down; the rebuilding enclosed it within a quadrangular wall with at least two towers. In 1443, with the arrival of the Aragonese, the Pandone took over: Francesco widened the moat and reinforced the defences, Enrico added the loggia and the garden and turned a war machine into a palace. In the early eighteenth century the feudal complex passed to the Carafa, and in the second decade of the nineteenth century to the Lombardi, who own it still.
What to see
The castle reads in layers. At the foot of the keep lie the remains of the oldest core, a single compact block; the encircling moat runs around it; at the northern, western and southern corners stand three large round towers on truncated-cone bases. Three, not the customary four: the fourth, if it ever existed, vanished along with the original layout, and it is this asymmetry that makes the silhouette recognisable at a glance. Under the Lannoy, further work on the architecture and the decoration pushed the residential character further still. Inside, the rooms house the Museo nazionale di Castello Pandone, where the equestrian frescoes remain the high point.
Our editors' tip
Walk the outside first: the additions, demolitions and rebuildings ordered by the successive owner families have left joints and seams plainly visible in the masonry, and working out where the fortress ends and the palace begins makes the rooms far more rewarding afterwards.