| Arechi Castle | |
|---|---|
 Arechi Castle as seen from Salerno | |
  Location within Italy | |
| General information | |
| Type | castle |
| Location | Salerno |
| Coordinates | 40°24′50″N14°27′06″E / 40.414°N 14.4517°E |
| Completed | VI w. |
| Website | |
| http://www.ilcastellodiarechi.it/ | |
Arechi Castle is a castle in southern Italy located on top of a mountain (about 360m above sea level), at the foot of which lies the city of Salerno.
The construction of the castle began in the 6th century (over the remains of an old roman castrum) under the Byzantine rule (the construction of the oldest part of the ramparts made of sandstone blocks is characteristic of this period).
Salerno was part of the Duchy of Benevento, which was the southernmost part of the Kingdom of the Lombards. When Charlemagne attacked the Lombards in the year 774, the Duchy of Benevento was ruled by Arechi II. He moved the main centre of power from Benevento to Salerno in order to strengthen his control over strategic areas such as the coastline and to secure communications within the province of Campania. During this period the castle was heavily fortified and its ramparts took the shape that have survived to our times.
It was the place where lived the longobard rulers of the Principality of Salerno until the beginning of the Italian Rinascimento.
Over the centuries, the castle had many owners. Archaeological work has identified, among other things, traces of the Norman presence.
A watchtower was built north of the castle, allowing to conduct observations of the Gulf of Salerno. The castle suffered heavy damage during the 1694 earthquake and since then remained abandoned until the unification of Italy in 1861 (when was started a small initial reconstruction).
Currently, the castle has been partially rebuilt in the late 1950s, when most of the castle was reopened to the public.
It was recently bought from the Salerno's commune by a private company, that arranged a restaurant inside.
The defensive walls, however, are open to visitors free of charge. And there it is also a museum in the castle (large collections of coins and medieval ceramics were found during the renovation). [1]
At night, perfectly lit, it is visible from almost anywhere in Salerno , where it is one of the main tourist attractions.
The Lombards or Longobards were a Germanic people who conquered most of the Italian Peninsula between 568 and 774.
Salerno is an ancient city and comune (municipality) in Campania, southwestern Italy, and is the capital of the namesake province, being the second largest city in the region by number of inhabitants, after Naples. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. In recent history the city hosted Victor Emmanuel III, the King of Italy, who moved from Rome in 1943 after Italy negotiated a peace with the Allies in World War II, making Salerno the capital of the "Government of the South" and therefore provisional government seat for six months and so Former capitals of Italy. Some of the Allied landings during Operation Avalanche occurred near Salerno.
Benevento is a city and comune (municipality) of Campania, Italy, capital of the province of Benevento, 50 kilometres (31 mi) northeast of Naples. It is situated on a hill 130 metres above sea level at the confluence of the Calore Irpino and the Sabato. In 2020, Benevento has 58,418 inhabitants. It is also the seat of a Catholic archbishop.
The history of Italy in the Middle Ages can be roughly defined as the time between the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the Italian Renaissance. Late antiquity in Italy lingered on into the 7th century under the Ostrogothic Kingdom and the Byzantine Empire under the Justinian dynasty, the Byzantine Papacy until the mid 8th century. The "Middle Ages" proper begin as the Byzantine Empire was weakening under the pressure of the Muslim conquests, and most of the Exarchate of Ravenna finally fell under Lombard rule in 751. From this period, former states that were part of the Exarchate and were not conquered by the Lombard Kingdom, such as the Duchy of Naples, became de facto independent states, having less and less interference from the Eastern Roman Empire.
The Duchy of Spoleto was a Lombard territory founded about 570 in central Italy by the Lombard dux Faroald. Its capital was the city of Spoleto.
The Duchy of Benevento was the southernmost Lombard duchy in the Italian Peninsula that was centered in Benevento, a city in Southern Italy. Lombard dukes ruled Benevento from 571 to 774, when the Kingdom of the Lombards was conquered by the Kingdom of the Franks. Being cut off from the rest of the Lombard possessions by the papal Duchy of Rome, Benevento always had held some degree of independence. Only during the reigns of Grimoald and the kings from Liutprand on was the duchy closely tied to the Kingdom of the Lombards. After the fall of the in 774, the duchy became the sole Lombard territory which continued to exist as a rump state, maintaining its de facto independence for nearly 300 years as the Principality of Benevento.
Pandulf I Ironhead was the Prince of Benevento and Capua from 943 until his death. He was made Duke of Spoleto and Camerino in 967 and succeeded as Prince of Salerno in 977 or 978. He was an important nobleman in the fight with the Byzantines and Saracens for control of the Mezzogiorno in the centuries after the collapse of Lombard and Carolingian authority on the Italian Peninsula. He established himself over almost the whole of the southern half of Italia before his death in March 981. He was an ancestor of Sancho I.
Grimoald or Grimwald (†671) was a 7th-century King of Italy, ruling as Duke of Benevento from 647 to 662, and then as King of the Lombards from 662 until his death in 671.
Arechis II was a Duke of Benevento, in Southern Italy. He sought to expand the Beneventos' influence into areas of Italy that were still under Byzantine control, but he also had to defend against Charlemagne, who had conquered northern Italy.
The Duchy of Amalfi or the Republic of Amalfi was a de facto independent state centered on the Southern Italian city of Amalfi during the 10th and 11th centuries. The city and its territory were originally part of the larger ducatus Neapolitanus, governed by a patrician, but it extracted itself from Byzantine vassalage and first elected a duke in 958.
The Duchy of Naples began as a Byzantine province that was constituted in the seventh century, in the reduced coastal lands that the Lombards had not conquered during their invasion of Italy in the sixth century. It was governed by a military commander (dux), and rapidly became a de facto independent state, lasting more than five centuries during the Early and High Middle Ages. Naples remains a significant metropolitan city in present-day Italy.
The Principality of Salerno was a medieval Southern Italian state, formed in 851 out of the Principality of Benevento after a decade-long civil war. It was centred on the port city of Salerno. Although it owed allegiance at its foundation to the Carolingian emperor, it was de facto independent throughout its history and alternated its allegiance between the Carolingians and their successors in the West and the Byzantine emperors in the east.
The Principality of Capua was a Lombard state centred on Capua in Southern Italy. Towards the end of the 10th century the Principality reached its apogee, occupying most of the Terra di Lavoro area. It was originally a gastaldate, then a county, within the principality of Salerno.
The Norman conquest of southern Italy lasted from 999 to 1194, involving many battles and independent conquerors. In 1130, the territories in southern Italy united as the Kingdom of Sicily, which included the island of Sicily, the southern third of the Italian Peninsula, the archipelago of Malta, and parts of North Africa.
Santa Sofia is a Roman Catholic church in the town of Benevento, in the region of Campania, in southern Italy; founded in the late-8th century, it retains many elements of its original Lombard architecture.
Rocca dei Rettori is a castle in Benevento, southern Italy. It currently houses the Museum of the Samnium.
The Lombard coinage of Benevento, part of the more general Lombard coinage, is the set of coins minted between about 680 and the end of the ninth century in the duchy and principality of Benevento. Solidi and tremisses, both gold coins that imitated those of the Eastern Roman Empire, were first minted; later followed the issuance of coins in the names first of the dukes and then of the Benevento princes. Toward the end of the 8th century alongside the gold coins were minted silver coins, which gradually took the place of the earlier ones, as moreover happened in the rest of Western Europe. Silver became the prevalent coinage metal only from the mid-9th century.
The Principality of Benevento was the sole Lombard territory which continued to exist as a rump state, maintaining its de facto independence after the fall of the Kingdom of the Lombards at the hands of the Franks. Benevento dwindled in size in the early 11th century, and was completely captured by the Norman Robert Guiscard in 1053.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
