The Swabian castle is the emblematic building of Augusta: a thirteenth-century fortress at the northern end of the island on which the town stands. Work probably began in 1232, perhaps over a watchtower of Norman date, at the wish of Emperor Frederick II of Swabia, who entrusted the building to Riccardo da Lentini; it ended in 1242. The castle was part of a system designed to defend the eastern coast of the kingdom from the sea, with those of Catania, Syracuse, Gela, Milazzo and Scaletta Zanclea. It was later occupied by the Angevins and the Aragonese, and in the seventeenth century was given imposing bastioned works.
What to see
The Swabian core is a square of walls sixty-two metres on each side, with eight towers and a facing of blocks of the sandstone called giuggiulena. The towers at the centre of the sides were rectangular in plan to east and west, polygonal to north and south. Inside there are large pointed arches and ribbed cross vaults, Gothic.
The adaptations of the modern age, first military and then for a prison, have greatly altered the medieval structure: the floors of cells above the portico date from the conversion into a penitentiary in 1890. The ravelin is occupied by the State Police station.
Visiting
Having passed to the state and been entrusted to the Soprintendenza of Syracuse, in recent years the castle has not been open to visitors, because of the danger of collapse: it is seen from outside. In 2016 the Syracuse prosecutor's office opened an inquiry into its condition and the monument was placed under seizure; it is worth finding out how things stand before going.
Our editors' tip
To understand what it was for, put it together with the other defences of the roadstead: in the sixteenth century the viceroy García de Toledo had the forts Garcia and Vittoria built on two rocks, which were meant to cross the fire of their artillery with that of the castle against an enemy fleet.
