Also this year the Aragonese Castle of Taranto continues to collect a great success among the tourist destinations of Puglia, with about 70.000 visitors from the 1 January 2018 to today.
The Aragonese Castle in 2017 has been recognized as the second historical - archaeological site of the region for having reached, throughout the year, about 117.000 visitors of which about 30.000 tarantini, about 69.000 from all over Italy and almost 18.000 from the rest of the world.In total from the 2005, year of opening to the public, the Castle has seen through its ancient halls more than 760.000 people.
The structure is also in fourth place, to date, among the "Places of the heart" in the online voting of the special ranking of sites to be enhanced, promoted by the FAI.
The Navy shares with the FAI the love for the history of our country and for the protection of historical sites. With the ships and its crews it promotes awareness of the importance of the sea for our country, because now as in the past, the well-being and progress of our nation depend on the sea, its respect, its protection and valorization. The sea holds the secret of our origin, caresses and protects important relics of our history and can reveal the secrets of our future.
Marina Militare and FAI
This year, among the thousand sites distributed throughout the national territory that the FAI has chosen to tell the extraordinary cultural and environmental heritage of our country have been included Palazzo Marina in Rome (link), the Naval Academy of Livorno (link) and the San Felice Fort in Chioggia, which registered an influx of about 26 visitors, on the occasion of the 24 edition of the Spring Days of the 25 and 10.000 March.
Particularly pleasing to the public were the guided tours, by the volunteers of the prestigious foundation, inside Palazzo Marina, through an itinerary that retraces the history of the Italian Navy between furniture, architecture and paintings, which is then the history of maritime Italy. . The various groups alternated along the planned path that included a visit to the monumental staircase of honor, the Salone dei Marmi, the Historical Library - with over 40 thousand volumes, many of them rare manuscripts - and several rooms never open to the public between which the hall opened just the 24 March and entitled to Grand Admiral Paolo Thaon of Revel, protagonist of the victory over the sea during the First World War.
Aragonese Castle
With its quadrangular shape, the Catagon Aragonese of Taranto occupies the extreme corner of the island on which stands the ancient village of the city, a modified form over the years. Initially it was only a "Rocca" made by tall and narrow towers and only in 1486 the military architect, "Francesco di Giorgio Martini", was commissioned to expand the castle giving it the shape that we can admire today.
In memory of its construction, a walled plaque on the "Porta Paterna" which adorned with the coat of arms of the Aragonese quartered with the weapon of the Anjou reports:
"King Ferdinando Aragonese, son of the divine Alfonso and nephew of the divine Ferdinando, made this drowning castle more old and more solid for old age, so that he could sustain the impetus of the bullets that is borne with the utmost vigor - 1492. "
Over the years the structure was reinforced with new towers and its use changed from a military structure for the defense to a prison until the 1887, the year in which the castle returns to be military headquarters and more precisely the Navy.
In its history we remember the long imprisonment of the Count of Montecristo, the first general in color in history, inspired by the novel of the same name.