Remains of Castro

Among the thick, wooded vegetation is hidden one of the most interesting dead cities in Italy: Castro, Renaissance capital of the Dukedom of same name and managed by the Farnese family. The famous architect, Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane, designed it, but the city is no longer intact because the entire city was demolished by the papal army in 1649. What happened? As it seems, in 1648 the bishop's headquarters of Castro was entrusted by Pope Innocent X to Barnabite, Cristoforo Giarda, but Ranuccio II, duke of Castro, didn't agree with this decision and sent some assassins to kill him. This provoked the tremendous retaliation of Innocent X, who gave the order to occupy the Dukedom of Castro and demolish the capital city down to its foundation. They used pickaxes, light mines, ropes; and you can see the result today going into the forest: paths and clearings were once streets, piazzas, and courtyards; the heaps of rubble made up homes, buildings, and churches. Buildings such as Palazzo Ducale, l'Hostaria, la Zecca, the convent of San Francesco, all works of Sangallo, aren't there anymore. At the beginning of the town, an epigraph is posted in memory of the city: "Here was Castro." Stop to read it and then, equipped with imagination, go into the woods of the dead city.
Here there are also Etruscan necropolises, reminding us of the presence of the important settlement, perhaps the city of Statonia. Visit the remarkable Tomb of Semidado, from the 6th century B.C., with three rooms dug into the tufo, in which nenfro frames and protomes of heads of rams and lions were found; today they are held in the Museum of Ischia di Castro; the very famous Tomb of the Biga of Castro, in which the very rare example of an Etruscan biga was found, is today on exhibit at the Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome. It is a hypogeum sepulchre with a long open-air dromos vestibule and room.