Castello Piccolomini - Collezione Torlonia e Museo d'arte sacra della Marsica

Celano's castle is the emblem of the town. It rises where medieval Celano was refounded after 1223, overlooks the drained Lake Fucino, and condenses the history of the Marsica: a fortress begun by the Berardi, completed as a Renaissance residence by the Piccolomini, now home to two state collections.

Why it matters

The castle is an emblem of Celano and a landmark of the Sirente-Velino area. The building began as a military stronghold at the end of the fourteenth century and ended as a princely palace, so it shows in one monument how a border county of the Kingdom of Naples was governed and displayed. Since 1992 its halls have held the Museo d'arte sacra della Marsica and the Collezione Torlonia, making the castle also the place where the religious art and the ancient archaeology of the Fucino basin are kept together under one roof.

What to notice

The building can be read from the outside in. The plan is a rectangle with four square corner towers crowned in Ghibelline swallowtail merlons; an outer curtain interrupted by five round towers and eleven shield-shaped towers rings the block, and a drawbridge crosses the ditch to the main entrance. The courtyard contains an ancient well-cistern.

Inside, the Museum of Sacred Art of the Marsica displays painting, stone and wood sculpture, goldwork and vestments from across the Marsica, ranging from the sixth to the eighteenth century. Its collection includes twelfth-century carved wooden doors from Santa Maria in Cellis at Carsoli and San Pietro in Alba Fucens, the Alba Fucens triptych combining painting, sculpture and goldwork, a fifteenth-century Virgin painted by Andrea De Litio, the Orsini cross dated 1334, and a thirteenth-century stauroteca in the Byzantine manner. The Torlonia Collection, acquired by the state in 1994, holds 184 objects and 344 Roman bronze coins found during the draining of the lake. Highlights include a Head of Aphrodite of the third or second century BC and second-century AD limestone reliefs depicting the drainage works, including a view of a city and its territory.

Context and history

Work on the fortress started around 1392 under Pietro Berardi, count of Celano, on the hill of San Flaviano where Frederick II's siege camp had stood during the 1223 assault that levelled the old hilltop town. Pietro's niece Covella and her husband Leonello Acclozamora enlarged the complex, and in 1463 Antonio Todeschini Piccolomini, nephew of Pope Pius II and newly invested count of Celano by King Ferrante of Aragon, brought the works to completion and turned it into a residence. Various noble families followed, until the state expropriated the building in 1938 and declared it a national monument. The earthquake of 13 January 1915 had wrecked much of the structure; reconstruction began in 1940, was interrupted by the war, and finished in 1960, reusing original materials where possible, though furnishings and nearly all frescoes were lost. Since 2009 the castle also shelters works of the Museo Nazionale d'Abruzzo of L'Aquila, saved after that city's earthquake.