Castello di Canossa: Medieval Fortification in Italy

The castle of Canossa is located in the municipality of Canossa in the province of Reggio Emilia, in the Appennino Reggiano.

The fortress was built around 940 by Adalberto Atto, son of Sigifredo di Lucca, prince of Longobard lineage.

In addition to the Dominican house, on the top of the cliff, the castle included a convent in which there were usually twelve monks of the order of the Cluniac Benedictines and the church of Sant’Apollonio.

It was defended by a triple circle of walls and between the first and second, the lowest took place the buildings of shelter for the armed and the servants and buildings that constituted the villages.

During the Middle Ages the fortress was impregnable and Queen Adelaide, widow of Lothario II, king of Italy, took refuge in it, who in 950 sheltered in Canossa to defend herself from the Marquis of Ivrea, Berengario II, who besieged for over 3 years, without result, the fortress.

After Matilde

After the death of the great Countess Matilde di Canossa, which took place in Bondeno di Roncore on July 24, 1115, a great struggle for the legacy of the Matilda heritage (of which the nearby castle of Rossena was part), having this in life solemn donation of all his goods to the Church.

With alternating events, the castle was the successor of Matilde, then of the Reggiani, who destroyed it to the foundations in 1255, then again of the Canossa, then of Gilberto da Correggio, who died in 1321. At the end of this year, the castle returned to the Municipality of Reggio which held it until 1402.

In the fourteenth century the Visconti, lords of Reggio Emilia from 1371, endowed the castle with firearms.

In 1402 Simone, Guido and Alberto Canossa resumed possession of the castle; in the year 1409, these gave the fortress definitively to the Estensi, who except for a short period of time (in 1557 by Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma) held it until 1796.

In 1502 Ercole I appointed a captain of the Ludovico Ariosto stronghold who resided there for almost six consecutive months, and in 1593 the castle became a fief of the counts Rondinelli.

In 1642 Duke Francesco I invested the family Valentini of Canossa who held the fief until 1796.

In that year the inhabitants of Canossa rebelled by joining the Republic of Reggio.

Napoleon I, by decree of 8 June 1805, established the Municipality of Canossa that in 1809 was joined to that of Quattro Castella.

In 1815, after the restoration, the town of Quattro Castella was part of that of San Polo and in 1819 the counts Valentini obtained from the Duke to re-possess the feud of Canossa.

They remained owners until 1878, the year in which the State bought the fortress, declaring it a National Monument.

The castle has been the subject of a series of restoration and recovery interventions.

These interventions have been realized also thanks to the funds of the Gioco del Lotto, according to what is regulated by the law 662/96

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*This article uses material from the Wikipedia article “Castello di Canossa” , which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0 (view authors).