Castello di Sessa Aurunca (Ducale)
Sessa Aurunca (CE)
Hidden gemCastles
The story
The ducal castle of Sessa Aurunca, born in the Lombard age on the ancient acropolis, today safeguards the mosaics and marbles that resurfaced from the city's Roman theatre.
More gems in Sessa Aurunca
History & archaeologySessa Aurunca (Ponte Ronaco, teatro, Settimana Santa)
Sessa Aurunca
The second Roman theatre of Campania, the Romanesque cathedral built from the stones of ancient temples, and the hooded rites of Settimana Santa (Holy Week): a city that lives on memory.
- Street art
Borgo dipinto di Valogno
Sessa Aurunca (CE)
A tiny hamlet of Sessa Aurunca amid the woods of Roccamonfina, Valogno answered depopulation with colour, painting the walls, vaults and balconies of its houses with dozens of works.
- Street art
Borgo dei Murales di Valogno
Sessa Aurunca (CE)
A handful of houses that the murals have turned into a tale: verses, fables and painted figures on the walls of an almost forgotten borgo (old village) at the foot of Sessa.
In the water & divingPonte Real Ferdinando sul Garigliano
Sessa Aurunca (CE)
On 10 May 1832 the king climbed to the middle of the span and ordered two squadrons of lancers to trot across it, followed by sixteen artillery trains: Italy's first iron-chain suspension bridge had to prove it was not afraid. It is still there, with its cast-iron sphinxes.
- History & archaeology
Ponte Ronaco (Ponte Auruncus)
Sessa Aurunca (CE)
Twenty-one Roman arches striding across an entire valley, 176 metres of viaduct built under Trajan. On the basalt paving you still walk on stones trodden two thousand years ago, among brambles and silence.
- History & archaeology
Ex centrale nucleare del Garigliano
Sessa Aurunca (CE)
The white sphere of the reactor appears out of nowhere among the fields of the Garigliano: one of Italy's first nuclear power stations, switched on in 1964, shut down in 1982, and today being dismantled piece by piece. A fossil of a future that never arrived.
More gems: Castles
- Castles
Palazzo Sansevero
P.za San Domenico Maggiore
On the corner of piazza San Domenico the palace of the princes of Sangro still carries the echo of the night when Gesualdo surprised and killed Maria d'Avalos and her lover.
CastlesCastel Capuano
zona Garibaldi
An old Norman castle that for four centuries served as the courthouse of Naples: here justice held session in frescoed halls, in the shadow of nearby Porta Capuana.
CastlesPalazzo Donn'Anna
Posillipo
The unfinished seventeenth-century palace juts sheer over the water, dark and labyrinthine: through its empty rooms legend has the shadow of Donn'Anna still wandering.
CastlesCasina Vanvitelliana
Lago Fusaro, Bacoli
An octagonal pavilion that seems to float on Lago Fusaro, a Bourbon hunting lodge reached by a little bridge, among reflections and morning mists.
CastlesVilla Lysis (Fersen)
Capri
Built in 1905 by the poet Fersen and dedicated to love and to sorrow, an Art Nouveau villa among the pines, with a Latin inscription at the entrance and the opium room hidden below.
CastlesPalazzo d'Avalos (ex carcere)
Terra Murata
First the palace of the d'Avalos family, then a prison until the late twentieth century: the empty cells command Terra Murata, suspended between the memory of the inmates and the silence that lives there now.