Fortezza di Castelfranco

Castelfranco began as a Genoese castle around 1365, built to command the shore settlement and limit the power of the Del Carretto marquises. Under Spanish rule, it became a seaward fortress of Finale. Spared when the Republic of Genoa pulled down its other coastal forts after 1713, it later served as a prison and today holds a multimedia documentation centre on the history of Finale and its fortifications.

Why it matters

Castelfranco condenses both halves of Finale's political story into one building. Around 1365 the Republic of Genoa raised a castle on the Gòttaro hill between Finalmarina and Finalpia to command the Ripa maris, the shore settlement below, and to limit the power of the Del Carretto marquises inland. Its very name records the arrangement: the castle was "free" of the local lords and paid them no tribute. When the Spanish crown inherited Finale in 1602 and made it the "Puerta a la mar" of the Duchy of Milan, this medieval core was absorbed into a modern bastioned fortress — and after the War of the Spanish Succession it was the only one of the seventeenth-century fortifications that Genoa did not demolish.

What to notice

The central polygonal tower is the recognisable survivor of the medieval castle, later incorporated into the Spanish works. From the courtyard and the terrace the fortress lines up with the open sea, the position that made it a coastal battery as much as a land stronghold, and with views over the town and sea. Inside, the fortress houses the Centro di Documentazione Multimediale Storico Territoriale, with multimedia stations reproducing historic maps, photographs and postcards of the Finale coast from the late nineteenth century onwards, together with a section on the Piaggio aeronautical industry, which operated at Finalmarina from 1906. During the First World War the fortress held Austro-Hungarian prisoners, many of whom died in the influenza epidemic of 1918–19.

Context and history

The sixteenth century brought demolitions, rebuildings and repeated occupations by Genoese, Spanish and imperial forces, and the castle at one point served as the residence of imperial commissioners. The Spanish century then ringed the hill with new defences: between 1642 and 1645 the forts of Sant'Antonio and Annunziata rose on the ridge above, joined by a covered road; in 1647 a powder magazine and four large barracks were built for troops landing at Finale; in 1674–77 the military engineer Gaspare Beretta and his assistant Serena reinforced the Annunziata and added sea defences with a revellino protecting the fortress entrance; and around 1680 the Forte di Legnino crowned the top of the Gòttaro. When Genoa acquired Finale at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, it pulled the seventeenth-century works down — sparing Castelfranco, which was converted into a prison.