Castle of San Giacomo

Bello, ma abbandonato!!!!

Peccato che è totalmente abbandonato

Le altre recensioni si riferiscono al castello di santa Caterina che si trova fuori dal paese. Questo è un carvere!

Le scale sembrano non finire più e peccato che sia abbandonato....il paesaggio però ripaga della stanchezza. Dal paese sono 45 minuti a passo veloce. Cercate di andarci al tramonto....merita veramente tanto

The Normans built a fortification that would eventually become today's Castello San Giacomo, as well as a fort atop Mount Santa Catarina, less than a mile to the west. This construction process lasted from 1074 to 1101. This fort was built at the end of the First Italian War (1494–1498) and thus was supposed to protect Favignana from the evil French, whose aggression in the region may have caused this conflict. In addition, the ports and beaches of Sicily during this period are said to have been "overrun by the Turks," which could never affect the value of real estate in a potential holiday destination, and a good star town is a great way to both show strength and help eradicate them. annoying invasions. The name of Fort San Giacomo translates as Saint James, one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus and the patron saint of Spain. Now this fortress is not in the best condition. Requires renovation and restoration. The fort itself is a standard square interior with four bastions. the lower part of Castillo was hewn out of the rock, and it was in this protected place that the ammunition was kept, and the garrison also had to be safe from any attack. Castillo was surrounded by a moat, over which there were two drawbridges: one of them remains the entrance to the fort today, and the other connected the "male" part of the fort with the "rest of the fort". The moat, also carved into the rock of the island, is over thirty feet deep. When the Bourbons took over the leadership of this marvelous structure, they foresaw that its use would be more of a prison than a defensive one. Castillo became a prison, a role he unfortunately played for the next 300 years. Almost immediately, the fort was filled with those in need of confinement, leaving no room for those lucky ones assigned to look after them. In the stone walls of the fort's moat, "dormitories" were carved into which prison guards and other "ministers of punishment" were housed. And how luxurious the apartment must have been, gloomy and damp with the island's tuff, volcanic rock that holds water as efficiently as it makes anyone who tries to exist nearby miserable. Later, more of these really nice pits were dug into the walls at the base of the moat for additional housing for the prisoners. After all, social mores have evolved to recognize that even prisoners deserve a certain level of hygiene and self-respect. A new prison was built on Favignana and the last prisoners left Castillo San Giacomo in 2011. It is terrible that this new prison did not have enough housing for its staff, and the guards of the new prison who still live in the castle! In 2013, an exhibition entitled "The Invisible Castle", which features works by Favignan photographers Bebo Cammarat and Renato Pantaleo, highlights the dire conditions in Castello. Prisoners and guards were portrayed as victims of a state that, for budgetary reasons, allowed the prison to remain in service for so long after it was widely deemed ludicrously inhuman. The fortress was used as a prison for about 150 years longer than it should have been.