Castello dell'Abate

Castrum Abbatis, the abbot's stronghold, was begun on 10 October 1123 by Costabile Gentilcore, abbot of Cava, and completed by his successor Simeone. Its walls and four round towers still crown Castellabate, guarding a village that grew inside and the Tyrrhenian horizon the fortress once watched for Saracen sails.

Why it matters

The castle is the reason the town exists under this name: Castellabate derives directly from Castrum Abbatis, the castle of the abbot, as the municipality itself explains. It is also an unusual instance of a fortress raised not by a feudal lord but by a monastic authority, the Benedictine abbey of Cava dei Tirreni, which won from the Normans the right to defend its coastal possession against the Saracen stronghold at Agropoli. The first stone was laid on 10 October 1123 by Costabile Gentilcore, the fourth abbot, a date so fixed in local memory that the main square of the borgo carries it in its name. Within these walls a community took shape and received its 1138 charter of privileges.

What to notice

The fortification has a perimeter enclosure secured by four round corner towers, each oriented to a cardinal point, allowing lookouts to command the horizon, seaward and inland. The walls once enclosed dwellings, warehouses, ovens and cisterns. Tradition holds that vaulted passages beneath the houses allowed the population to escape toward the beaches of Santa Maria during an invasion. The ground-floor rooms house the Mare Antico exhibition on the coast's Roman and medieval seafaring archaeology.

Context and history

Costabile Gentilcore directed the building campaign from 1123 but died in 1124, before the work was finished; the town later honoured him as patron saint, with a feast each 17 February. His successor, the beato Simeone, completed the fortress in the 1130s, added a port, and in 1138 granted the settlement a diploma of very broad privileges, endowing houses and land on those who reclaimed the unhealthy coastal plain. The fortress never lost its defensive purpose during the centuries of Saracen threat, and village life unfolded within its walls under the abbots of Cava, who ruled here until 1835, when the baronial palace passed out of Benedictine hands. After centuries as shelter, storehouse and seat of power, the municipality restored the castle and adapted its rooms to interpret the sea that once brought the danger it was built against.