Bellegra- Castello Montecasale by Bruno Schina
Bellegra- Castello Montecasale by Bruno Schina

Bellegra. Castle of Montecasale

This castle appears in the texts but unfortunately the ruins have not yet been found.

The castle is mentioned in the 1115 Pope Easter II bull, where it is said to belong to the monastery of St. Benedict and to be near Pisoniano Civitella.

Abbot Pietro IV (1123-1145) names it in Chronicorum Sublacense (the chronicles of Subiaco) saying that it was in a strategic position for the territory of Gerano.
Pietro IV, to counter the threat of neighbour, Gerano, bought the castle of Montecasale (castrum Monticasali) from Gregorio Anticoli and, thanks to this, conquered the town of Gerano by breaking down his towers.

In the year 1159, Philip of Marano began a conquest campaign and came to destroy the castle. In 1189 Father Casimiro in a parchment of the archives of Santa Scolastica placed on the same plan the castles of Pisoniano, MonteCasale, Civitella and Olevanum.

All this is confirmed in the famous act of pacification signed between the Two Hundred Lords of Civitella in 1230 and Abbot Lando, which obliged them not to add other buildings to Castri Monticasalis and to pay one tenth of the products annually.

The castle still existed in the seventeenth century. In fact Father Casimiro says "the convent of Montecasale is at the place that is now called Civitella and is more than a mile from the castle of which everything was totally destroyed so that today it remains only the name and some vestiges of the buildings that composed it."

In 2016, there were found in the woods ruins of walls, bricks, cobblestones and a sandstone arch. The place is about a mile from Bellegra, a distance of eye, and overlooks Pisoniano.
 


Written by:
Benedicta Lee

Born in Rome from an Italian mother and American father, she works as a freelance communications manager and designer in the tourism sector, a career and interest which she is pursuing with a...

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