Rocca del Leone

The Rocca del Leone crowns the peninsula of Castiglione del Lago, its crenellated walls extending towards Lake Trasimeno. The pentagonal fortress preserves a triangular keep and the remains of a church dedicated to Saints Philip and James within its courtyard.

Why it matters

The regional tourism authority describes the Rocca del Leone as an important example of medieval military architecture in Umbria. Its history reflects successive contests for control between Perugia, Tuscany and the papacy. Sources offer different accounts of its beginnings: one tradition dates the fortress to 1247 under Frederick II, while the regional portal also records an earlier stronghold destroyed by Henry IV in 1091, followed by Perugian fortification in the late thirteenth century.

What to notice

The irregular pentagonal plan has a crenellated wall, towers at the angles and a triangular keep nearly thirty metres tall. The wall walk runs along the curtain and bastions. Within the fortress are ruins of a church dedicated to Saints Philip and James, described by the regional portal as Byzantine-era and probably built on the site of an Etruscan temple. The courtyard's later use as an open-air amphitheatre is another phase in the site's history.

Context and history

The fortress changed hands during the conflicts of central Italy: Henry VII of Luxembourg was there in 1312, Guglielmo di Beaufort in 1375, Braccio Fortebraccio in 1416 and Giampaolo Baglioni in 1503. Ascanio I della Corgna held it from 1550; the family later joined the fortress to its residence with a covered corridor. The regional portal attributes fourteenth-century works around 1325 to Lorenzo Maitani. The fortress passed to the Apostolic Camera in 1647 and to the municipality of Castiglione del Lago in 1860.