Castello Aragonese di Le Castella

The Castello Aragonese stands on an islet joined to Le Castella by a narrow sand spit. Its walls incorporate remains of a Greek fortified outpost and later medieval and Aragonese construction, overlooking the eastern Gulf of Squillace.

Why it matters

This is the silhouette that defines the whole destination: a compact fortress on a rocky islet, joined to the mainland by a strip of sand so thin that the stronghold seems to sit on the water. The Ministry of Culture's archaeologists record settlement traces from the late Bronze Age on the islet, and identify the remains of a Greek fortified outpost — a phrourion — largely built into the later medieval walls. Few Calabrian monuments pack that many layers into so small a footprint, and fewer still occupy such a photogenic position, encircled by the sea of the Capo Rizzuto marine protected area. For garrison soldiers it was a workplace, never a noble residence; for visitors today it is the most recognisable monument on the Crotone coast.

What to notice

The cylindrical mastio is the oldest standing element; a spiral stair cut into its thick walls links three levels, and a cavity at the base once held rainwater. The quadrangular bastions have walls that thicken toward the base, double-lobed merlons and narrow "bocca di lupo" openings. A sixteenth-century chapel preserves a fresco of a bearded figure carrying a shield with two fingers raised. Excavations at the neighbouring sixteenth-century church uncovered a double tomb, a single grave and an ossuary. The Sala Phrurion contains large squared blocks from the Greek outpost and harbour, while the western bastion preserves original paving. The nearby submerged archaeological trail follows worked blocks and cistern structures in the protected sea.

Context and history

The first castle rose in the opening decades of the thirteenth century, with late-century alterations connected to the War of the Vespers; the Aragonese admiral Ruggero di Lauria stormed and sacked the fortress in the summers of 1290 and 1292. In December 1444 the army of Alfonso V of Aragon besieged and took it from the marquis Antonio Centelles, and the Aragonese period imposed the form the fortress still keeps. Ottoman raids repeatedly battered the coast from the sixteenth century onward, and by the close of the eighteenth the islet had been definitively abandoned, its garrison-era buildings later transformed. Restoration under the Ministry of Culture's Parchi Archeologici di Crotone e Sibari returned the complex to visits, and the waters just offshore now carry a roughly 400-metre underwater route at about five metres' depth, where divers pass ancient worked blocks and cistern structures.