Built around 1060-1080, entirely redesigned by Baldassarre Peruzzi in 1532-36, and a Listed Grade I national monument since 1928, Rocca Sinibalda Castle is an extraordinary fortress-palace, unique in Europe.
Simultaneously abstract and animalistic, cubist and zoomorphic: “an abstract geometric creation, a construction that seems to have been cut with a sword” (Zander, 1955), but also an architectural representation of an eagle with folded wings for some, a sinister scorpion for more visionary others. Contradiction and paradox are embedded deep into the castle’s identity. Intensely medieval, yet grand Renaissance architecture. Gothic yet rational. Dark yet luminous. A mighty instrument of war, yet a princely palace. Sober, severe, at times harsh, yet decorated with Mannerist frescoes steeped in classical culture, and grotesques brimming with whimsy and free imagination.
A castle of metamorphoses, where the shapes, volumes, interior and exterior spaces, images and lights, unique collections, and diverse and unusual interior paths invite you to break free and desire change.
Renaissance Frescoes
The Castle hosts the most important Renaissance frescoes in the Sabina region, concentrated on the ground floor and the Piano Nobile of the seigneurial palace nestled between the military structures of the rear tail and front spur.
Added to these are the 18th-century pictorial representations of the Castle and its surroundings in the Great Hall.
The 16th-century frescoes were commissioned by the Cesarini family to provide an artistic and mythical touch to the reconstruction planned by Peruzzi. The frescoes meant the Castle’s noble, and not just military, vocation. They were intended to introduce identity, history, myth, culture, beauty, and pseudo-family memories: the pleasure of living grafted onto the expression of armed force, according to a synthesis characteristic of the Italian Renaissance and poised to spread throughout Europe.
In fact, there were two patrons: Cardinal Alessandro Cesarini, a wealthy and powerful pro-Imperial patron, who had hired Peruzzi for a long series of projects, including the Rocca Sinibalda Castle; then the Marquis Giuliano, “a proud and very violent man”, to whom we owe the second wave of frescoes, which were partly continued even after his death in 1565.
Collections
The Castle of Metamorphoses has the vocation of bringing together and intertwining opposites. Ancient, it is hypermodern. Rational and technological, it nurtures the unconscious and the primitive. Its aesthetic references are the artistic avant-gardes of the twentieth century, which took so-called primitive art as their inspiration and model.
Its collections include masks and totems of Northwest Coast natives, African masks and ritual objects, and works by artists who create with all sorts of everyday scraps, residues, waste, and objets trouvés. All the artifacts in the collections somehow are figures of metamorphosis, of change, of the passage from one state into another, and they dialogue with both the fresco cycles inspired by Ovid and with the grotesques.
Restoration
A challenging 7-year project.
Architect Claudio Silvestrin was in charge of the artistic direction. Silvestrin and his studio were single out after a selection process involving archistars such as Gae Aulenti, Michele De Lucchi, and others of similar standing.
The Castle is closely protected as a national heritage by the Ministry of Arts and Culture. The restoration project was approved, supervised and overseen by Architect Caterina Nucci (Superintendence of Architectural and Landscape Heritage), and by Drs. Dora Catalano and Benvenuto Pietrucci (Superintendence of Artistic Heritage). Architect Nucci was entrusted with the most complex task, which she carried out with dedication and a constant presence on the construction site.
GPL Costruzioni carried out the demanding general work. Restorers and art conservators Silvia Balena and Alessandra Morelli oversaw the cleaning and restoration of the frescoes and wooden ceilings and fixtures. Mrs. Morelli oversaw the colour research and the mortar work on the walls. Mr. Cisbani and the Petres firm dealt with nearly impossible marble projects.
The goal was a thorough but invisible restoration. The most apt comment came from Architect Silvestrin: “It seems like nothing has been done.”
Problems and Discoveries
The restoration faced all sorts of problems, both foreseeable and unexpected.
The most serious: a difficult location. The 30-meter crane was flown in by helicopter and assembled on site. The narrow streets of the medieval village surrounding the castle were impassable for even small to medium-sized vehicles. Erecting scaffolding on sheer rock outcrops and with walls that were not vertical put the technicians to the test.
It was also difficult to find local sand consistent with the materials used in centuries past for the mortar of the walls. Even more difficult The economically feasable recovery of existing features and meterial was a permanent challenge: five centuries-old marble steps and colums, massive doors and gates, beautiful but worn or broken bricks and tiles.
Further problems arose from the mediocrity, vulgarity and historical blindness of previous interventions. The Great Courtyard, with its improbable and vulgar cobblestones. The cement—often gray cement!—used with generous nonchalance, and difficult to remove. The iron spikes planted in the frescoes. The frequent use of varnish on the wooden floors and bricks. The replacement of damaged sections of the wooden ceilings with cheap materials. Everywhere, century-old leaks had degraded large frescoed surfaces, requiring delicate partial restoration work. Some frescoes had been ‘restored’ with an utterly clumsy and cheap approach, often with acrylic paints! And so much more, all of which turned into a seven-year labour!
Fortunately, there were also increasingly pleasurable discoveries. Day after day!
…. A seven-meter-deep ice pit, once filled with all kinds of debris and unseen in all surveys: emptied, it now shows how, hundreds of years ago, the castle’s inhabitants ensured snow and ice for the summer months.
…. A small but stunningly located swimming pool in a grove of cypresses. Used in the 1960s by Peggy Guggenheim, Gregory Corso, other Beat Generation poets, and the Living Theater. Then filled with earth and a few senseless shrubs, it has now returned to its original state, as shown in the rediscovered photographs of the time.
…. The mini-amphitheatre at the end of the so-called Basement, an elegant setting of great archtectural beauty.
…. The rocky outcrops on which the Castle is built, freed from everything that had grown up into hiding them.
…. The powerful walls with their dense, geometric shapes hidden by the now removed ivy.
…. The hanging gardens, redesigned in the early Seventies by the most uncompromising and eccentric Italian gardener, Ippolito Pizzetti.
And so so so much more…..
