The Frederician walls were the defensive system of the historic centre of Gela, built during the Frederician refounding of the city in 1233. Scattered stretches remain in various parts of the centre, with walls, towers and gates set into the façades of modern houses.
What to see
The sources point out a few stretches in particular. In via Matteotti there are walls with a fifteenth-century tower and four great stone arches. In via Verga, where the old prison stood, the walls have kept their original height and are free of heavy additions. In via Istria you can see a fourteenth-century bastion, partly collapsed, and, near the stairs of via Filippo Morello, the tower called «dello Sperone», after the district, with four powerful buttresses at the level of via Miramare, spoilt by a few concrete balconies. On viale Mediterraneo remain the bastion of Porta Marina and at least two towers; other stretches are in via Porta Vittoria.
In piazza Calvario you can see the ruins of the Frederician castle, also called the Palazzo ducale, of which the granaries remain. Almost all the gates were destroyed in the nineteenth century, except Porta Marina, taken down in the 1960s by the Soprintendenza of Agrigento with a view to a future rebuilding. The historic centre of Gela is, incidentally, one of the few with an orthogonal plan, with fairly straight and regular streets.
Visiting
The stretches of wall are scattered through the historic centre and partly built into modern houses: you find them by walking the streets named. The sources consulted do not say which stretches are accessible or at what hours: check with the Comune di Gela.
Our editors' tip
For comparison, Gela also has the Timoleontic walls of Capo Soprano, of the Greek age, with the mudbrick upper part still standing: two defences built more than fifteen centuries apart, not far from each other.
