Corleone
There would appear to have been 3 castles at or near
Corleone. The first is thought to have been at Castello Della
Montagna Vecchia about a mile south of the current town.
Corleone was recorded as a Byzantine fortress in 839/40 when it was surrendered to the Muslims. In 970 it was
mentioned as an Arab city called Qurliun.
The conquest of Palermo
by the Normans in 1072 probably also saw the fall of Arab Corleone and
the place was mentioned as inhabited in 1093. In the 1154
Book of Roger, Idrisi mentions ‘Corleone, a strong,
well-built and defensible castle'. Again in 1176 it was
recorded as a castellum
and was further mentioned concerning the lands of Monreale in 1182.
During the Muslim rebellion of the early thirteenth century, Corleone
castle was occupied by rebels to the Emperor and to the Archbishop of
Monreale in 1208. Crushing the revolt caused Frederick II (d.1250)
much trouble - see Eufemio-
and in 1237 he populated the land of Corleone with
Lombard refugees from the mainland. Twelve years later in 1249 he took the place back
into the royal domain to be strongly garrisoned and ready to resist any
assaults of any enemies. Despite this in May 1272 it was recorded
that there was an Angevin garrison here of just one squire.
In 1274 Corleone castle was repaired for the benefit of all in that
territory and it was still fortified in 1281, immediately before the
Sicilian Vespers war. As royalist castles presumably they
changed hands in 1282, but in 1325 they fell again to the
Angevins. In 1338 there was obviously a
castle of upper or superior (superioris)
Corleone as Peter Pontecorono was its castellan. This was
obviously different to the lower (inferioris)
castle which had Sir Roderick Viel as castellan in 1326, presumably
this meant that the castles were again held for the Aragonese. By
the 1330s the town was in a state of terrible decay and even the local
aristocratic family, the Pontecoronos, abandoned the place for Palermo
due to the stagnation of trade and the collapse of the population from
an estimated 30,000 before the Vespers to only 6,000 in 1374.
Despite all these troubles there were ‘castles' in Corleone in
both 1355 and 1375 when Curillionum
with its 2 castles were held by the Crown. It seems likely
that these 2 castles were those actually in the town - Soprano and
Sottano. At least one of these was still garrisoned for the
Crown by Roger Paruta in 1407. Obviously it is pretty much
impossible to guess which of the 3 castles were the ones mentioned in
the above history.
Descriptions
Castello Della Montagna Vecchia
The Old Mountain is a vast isolated plateau with sheer cliffs, located
about a mile south of Corleone. The castle is on the SW side
of the mountain summit covering an area of some 400' by 170'.
The site was partially excavated in 1992-4 and pottery was found dating
from Byzantine to Swabian times.
Corleone - Soprano Castle
The castle occupies a 2,820' high isolated cliff overlooking the
current town and overlooking the monastery of St Salvatore and the
ancient churches of Maria SS del Malo Passo and St Michael the
Archangel. The castle is on the 110' long, 40' wide neck of
an arrow head of land that projects like a spear towards the medieval
heart of Corleone. There is no masonry on the spearhead
protected by the main rhomboid shaped rock of the castle. The
only masonry that remains on the neck is a round rubble-built tower,
some 25' in diameter. It appears to have been freestanding
and was entered at it's ground floor from the west. That it
is round has led to the suggestion that it is Swabian and was built by
the Lombards in the 1230s or 1240s. It was ruinous before the
eighteenth century. Its position suggests that it was the
Superior castle.
Corleone - Castello Sottano
It is presumed that this was the inferior or lower castle, although
this is not certain. It stands on a high, isolated, tear drop
shaped, crag on the west side of the medieval town. It is
about 110' across at its widest and about 220' long. Its
greater size to Soprano castle may suggest that this is the superior
castle. Certainly it is on a more impressive crag and the
site is now occupied by the St Bernard hermitage which replaces an
older prison. There are no certain traces of a
castle.
Why not join me at other Sicilian
castles? Information on this and other tours can be found at Scholarly
Sojourns.
Copyright©2019
Paul Martin Remfry