Italy · 11th century
The Castle of Rocca Calascio is a mountaintop fortress or rocca in the municipality of Calascio, in the Province of L'Aquila, Abruzzo, Italy.
At an elevation of around 1,460 metres (4,790 ft), the castle is the highest fortress in the Apennines. Built of stone and masonry exclusively for military purposes and intended only to accommodate troops and never as a residence for nobles, the fortress overlooks the Plain of Navelli at one of the highest points in the ancient Barony of Carapelle.
Construction of the fortress started in the tenth century as a single watchtower. A walled courtyard with four cylindrical towers at the corners around a taller inner tower was added in the thirteenth century. The lower half of the fortress is built with distinctively larger stones than its upper half. It is believed that this feature was to make its base impenetrable to invaders. The fortress was never tested in battle. However, it was badly damaged in November 1461 by the 1461 L'Aquila earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7 to 8 on the Richter Scale. While the town of Calascio, which lies below the fortress, was rebuilt, the fortress was not.
The Castle of Rocca Calascio lies within the Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga National Park and alongside the high plain of Campo Imperatore. It has also been added to the Windows Spotlight image collection for the lock screen of Windows PC's
Text adapted from “Castle of Rocca Calascio” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Castle of Rocca Calascio ranks #1,402 of 9,079 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #102 of the 560 mapped in Italy. Founded c. 1050, it is older than 89% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 436 atlas entries founded in the 11th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 4,829 times in the last 60 days, more than 86% of the atlas. 17 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is L'Aquila, 25 km away. See how Italy compares in the castle statistics.
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