the fortress

It was 29th September 1385 when Marquis Nicoḷ II gave permission to proceed for the construction of a mighty fortress commissioning the court engineer, Bartolino da Novara, with the work.

It was St Michael's Day and the future castle was dedicated to the archangel.

THE ROCCA DEL LEONE (Lion's Fortress)

An old watchtower had previously stood on the site and for at least a hundred years had defended the walls to the north of the city and especially the nearby and important Porta del Leone (Lion's Gateway) beyond which was a small suburb that bore the same name (Borgo del Leone).

The walls to the north of Ferrara were defended by a broad canal that linked up to the Po river system. At that time the city extended along the left bank of the main branch of the great river, which began to branch into a large delta right at Ferrara. Water was the best defence for the buildings, the suburbs and the city.

The old watchtower had already been transformed and extended by Nicoḷ II himself some years before the castle was built.

From the tall rectilinear tower with its square floor plan, built as a simple watchtower, came a small strengthened fortress, more suitable to defensive purposes, somewhat wider at the base with broad battlements on the first floor geared to accommodating the new techniques for military defence. The battlements were reached by a ramp leading from the inside, extended to three sides, for the transport of arms and munitions with pack animals. The large rooms on the ground floor and first floors were used by the guard corps while in the dark basement were the dungeons.

On the outside, the architecture of the Rocca del Leone was divided into three central arches, marked by pilasters which projected somewhat. These brought out the four corners, where the walls were thicker than the rest of the building, just like on so many other small towers.

The outside walls were plastered and frescoed with simple decorative floral features and bands.

From the beginning, the Rocca was surrounded by a moat which provided a protected mooring place for boats to the north of the city and which was connected to the Porta del Leone on one side and to the walls of the city, via drawbridges, on the other side.

On 3rd September 1385, infuriated at the umpteenth oppressive tax, the people of Ferrara rioted in the streets and squares of the city. The Este family were terrified by the robberies and fires and in order to put down the rebellion, which had reached the doors of their palace, were forced to reach an agreement with the ferocious mob.

Tommaso da Tortona, a judge and adviser to the Marquis, was handed over to the rebels and paid the ultimate price, as they brutally murdered him.

Having escaped the danger and retaken control of the city Nicoḷ contemplated the weakness of both his political and logistic position.

In the days that followed, he took the decision to arrest the leaders of the rebellion and have them executed. He also decided to build a new fortress (another castle, Castel Tedaldo, on the great River Po defended the city towards the south) which would give protection to himself, his family and his power not only from outside attacks, but also and above all from the people of Ferrara, who increasingly viewed the Este family as outsiders and oppressors.

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THE BUILDING OF THE CASTELLO

The Marquis purchased the land which separated his family palace from the northern walls of the city and therefore from the Rocca and from the Porta del Leone. Here lay the small district of San Giuliano, based around the small church that bore the same name.

The small suburb was literally razed to the ground and the grandiose building project got under way.

Twenty years after its destruction, the Church of San Giuliano was rebuilt not far away, where it's still stands today.

Bartolino da Novara, already famous as a designer and builder of churches and fortifications, designed the Castello di San Michele, based on the existing, defensive hub of the Rocca del Leone, which he himself had probably already designed.

To get an idea of Bartolino da Novara's design for the Castello di San Michele, take a look at the Castello di San Giorgio a Mantua (although somewhat smaller in size) also designed by Bartolino ten years later for Francesco Gonzaga.

The scheme for the project was to add another three towers (named Santa Caterina, San Paolo and Marchesana), of equal size and height, three floors high, laid out to form a four-sided castle to the first tower-fortress by that time commonly known as the Torre dei Leoni,

Between one tower and another lay the two floors of the curtain wall, which with its large open courtyard in its interior made it a proper fortress, tall and well-constructed and with an appearance that must have seemed impregnable for that period.

Beneath the stringcourse of the raised ground floor, most of which is spiral shaped stone, the walls taper out and down and the ends are decorated with insignia of the house of Este.

As with the smaller fortress, the battlements of the second floor of the curtain wall and those of the third floor of the towers were defended by crenellations projecting on corbels in line with the traditional formulas of military architecture of the period.

The basements were built with low barrel vault ceilings that linked the underground rooms of the towers. It is on this massive and mighty structure, more of a foundation element than one of elevation, that the large mass of the castle building rests.

The ground floor, raised above the courtyard, consisted of a series of rooms with cross vault ceilings. For the most part, the first floor consisted of wide galleries that linked the towers, which also had cross vault ceilings. The battlements on the second floor were probably covered with roofs made of wood and tiles. To get between the floors there were spiral staircases which ran within the thick external walls.

In the basements and on the first floor of the avant-corps and the gatehouses, the openings were embrasures. In the rest of the castle light for the large rooms of the ground and first floors came through small windows.

The entire fortress was surrounded by a broad moat; the moat around the Torre dei Leoni, two sides of which were covered by the new building, still existed.

The entrances were defended by avant-corps flanking the towers: from these a drawbridge reached across to gatehouses, small auxiliary towers built in the moat; these were then connected to the outside bank of the moat by other bridges.

For the Este family's safety, their residence in the main town square was connected to the Castello di San Michele by means of a bridge from its first floor which, raised above ground level, crossed the space between the two buildings, then crossed the moat and led straight into the fortress courtyard.

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THE LIFE OF THE FORTRESS

The early decades in the life of the fortress saw it as the seat of the faithful Estense militia. Next to the soldiers' and servants' quarters, we find, in the most classical and traditional formula of organisation of buildings of this type, stables, armouries, store-rooms, workshops for producing arms and everyday pottery, laundry rooms, workshops for producing candles and soap and whatever else the small army and the lords of the adjoining palace needed.

All the store-rooms were arranged underground and could be reached directly from the moat and the canal outside the wall. They contained all that was required in terms of raw materials for the life of the castle and its inhabitants, from wood for heating to provisions for the kitchens. Still in these rooms within easy reach of the water and full of basins and wells are some workshops for the initial transformation processes of products for the kitchen and elsewhere: butchering meat, washing and cleaning produce, making candles and other activities.

On the ground floor and in the courtyard more complex activities were carried out; grooms and blacksmiths worked to take care of the horses, foundrymen produced and maintained arms, carpenters repaired carts and potters, produced pottery for everyday use.

The first floor, reached by narrow spiral staircases, barely heated by braziers, housed the troops and the officers.

On the battlements the soldiers stood guard and were drilled in the use of weapons in expectation of a battle, a campaign in a war or a siege that the castle of Ferrara would never have to face.

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THE DUNGEONS

It should be noted that the Este family made use of the castle in another way, for which it showed itself to be particularly secure. Within its walls were kept special prisoners. They were certainly not ordinary prisoners, who were kept in the cells of the courthouse in the city's central square, but those who were guilty of crimes against the house of Este, of attacks on the power of the Duke or of family plots and betrayals.

Prisoners in the castle were almost always high-ranking personages who often left evidence of their stay in the graffiti that is still visible in the largest dungeons.

Already in 1388, the chronicles describe how Obizzo d'Este, nephew of the then marquis Alberto, was imprisoned in the castle along with his mother Beatrice da Camino and many others involved in a plot obviously intended to seize power, which came to a bloody end with a series of bloodcurdling executions.

In 1425 Ugo d'Este and Parisina Malatesta, the son and young wife of Nicoḷ III were imprisoned in the castle and then beheaded, guilty not of a conspiracy but of love between young two people of the same age that the marquis could not forgive.

In the basement of the Marchesana Tower, theatre of the tragic end of the two young lovers, a frescoed triptych, now conserved in the museum, shows the Virgin Mary between two saints. The pictures seem to have been realised to atone for the crime and to consecrate the place of execution.

As we will see, under the Este family the castle, although enriched with other elements, would never lose its military function and that of being a place of detention for crimes which may be defined as political.

Even after the transformation, in the part of the castle that was lived in, the ground floor would always be used to defend its illustrious inhabitants while the rooms below would continue to be inhabited by those prisoners who would have to be kept under special surveillance.

Borso d'Este imprisoned and executed within the castle many of those who took part in the rebellion waged against him by the Pio family, lords of Carpi in 1469.

In 1506, once again a plot saw the castle used to lock people away. This time Giulio and Ferrante d'Este, guilty of having plotted against their brother Alfonso, designated heir to their father Ercole I's title of duke. Some of the plotters were executed immediately; Ferrante was imprisoned and died just a few years later, while Giulio would be kept in solitary confinement in the Torre dei Leoni until 1556.

In various rooms prisoners have left graffiti as a memorial to their "sad fate". They have continued to do so after the Este family, in the Papal era, the Napoleon one and even into the last century.

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