The Castle has the typical appearance of 15th century military constructions. It is believed that the date of its foundation is 1245, when Frederick II laid siege to Capaccio. Other sources date it back to 1092 according to a document by Gregory of Capaccio in which the “Castello di Rocca” is mentioned. Other hypotheses have been formulated, but without support. Certainly before the current construction, it must have been a fortified fortress at the time of the Lombard Princes of the Duchy of Be read more
The Castle has the typical appearance of 15th century military constructions. It is believed that the date of its foundation is 1245, when Frederick II laid siege to Capaccio. Other sources date it back to 1092 according to a document by Gregory of Capaccio in which the “Castello di Rocca” is mentioned. Other hypotheses have been formulated, but without support. Certainly before the current construction, it must have been a fortified fortress at the time of the Lombard Princes of the Duchy of Benevento, expanded with new defensive works under the barony of the Fasanella, approaching its current appearance with the 15th century defensive installations of the branch of the Sanseverino family, Barons of Cilento. In the mid-16th century the barony of Cilento, which until then had constituted a single “University” (municipality), was divided into a large number of fiefs that were put up for sale. The Rocca Castle was purchased by the Filomarino princes who held it until the first decades of the nineteenth century, with Giovanbattista, who became the first lord of Rocca in 1549, and Tommaso. The two had received from the Pope, in recognition of the courage shown during the battle of Otranto in 1480 against the Turks, two wooden statuettes. They contained the relics of Saints Sinforosa and Getulio and their seven children, martyrs under the emperor Septimius Severus in 194 AD - the two saints became the patrons of Roccadaspide -. The building also underwent renovations with the Filomarini: the cylindrical towers are from the sixteenth century, while the south-east wing has eighteenth-century renovations. Through an external eighteenth-century staircase and a vaulted passage you enter the Internal Courtyard, which has characteristics similar to those of fifteenth-century buildings; from here you go up a staircase with a portico, to the floor inhabited by the current owners. Traces of the ancient walls that surrounded it today incorporate buildings rebuilt after the Allied bombing of 1943. At the beginning of 1800 the property passed to the Giuliani family. The descendants, still today, preserve the works of art, placed in the halls and rooms intended for princely families and the court. read less
