Bisceglie castle was built, on the initiative of Count Peter I, from the eleventh century, in the Norman period. It is a building complex resulting from the aggregation of buildings and spaces of different eras.
What to see
The origins are uncertain and disputed. According to some scholars the oldest nucleus dates from the eleventh century, under the Normans, at the wish of Count Peter I, who around 1060 began work on the imposing tower called the «maestra», about twenty-four metres high and standing at the far right of the complex; according to others the castle layout took shape in the first half of the thirteenth century, in the Swabian period, near the already existing Norman tower. Certainly Angevin are the extraordinary enlargement works, witnessed by the coat of arms of Charles I of Anjou over the door of the west tower and by an inscription on the ring of the pointed-arch portal of the palatium. In the Aragonese period a large restoration, or rather a rebuilding, followed for a new fortification; then, unable to withstand the assault of firearms, the castle lost its military function and was put to civil uses: the Universitas used part of it for milling grain. From the end of the eighteenth century private owners demolished the blocks between the maestra tower and the corner tower near the Aragonese bastion, to build the present buildings at the corner between corso Umberto I and via porto; from the early twentieth century woodworking craftsmen's workshops found a place there, the central tower of the tax collectors housed the customs office and the northern corner tower was used as a bakery oven.
The castle was built on a rocky shelf near an old lama which, running down towards the bend of the harbour, skirted the oldest urban nucleus. From the eighteenth century the structure, of local limestone, had a quadrangular plan with an inner courtyard, with four square towers at the corners, among them the imposing maestra tower, and a tower on the western curtain at the entrance, called the customs tower. The east and south sides faced the town wall and in the Aragonese period were protected by an angular spur; the other two were surrounded by a moat, and entry was by a drawbridge between the customs tower and the maestra tower. In the courtyard rose on two levels the palatium, the castellan's old residence, of which the access door and the remains of a pointed-arch mullioned window on the main floor survive. In the north-east corner the castle incorporates the small church of San Giovanni, with a simple gabled facade, a lunette portal and a single-light window, a pitched roof framed by rampant arches and a bell-gable; its single barrel-vaulted nave ends in a small apse set into the town wall.
Visiting
What remains of the castle has been under restoration since 1982, interrupted several times. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.
Our editors' tip
The website of the Bisceglie Pro Loco has a section devoted to the castle and the maestra tower.
