Mongialino or Mineo
The castle lies above the Catania plain some 6½ miles
NW of Mineo. There was apparently a fortress at Mineo in the
spring of 828, when the Muslim army, retreating from Syracuse,
besieged it for 3 days and forced its surrender. Presumably this
the site of the older Greek defences and not Mongialino castle.
Mineo changed hands again the next year, but was finally taken and
destroyed by the Arabs in 830.
In 1154 Edrisi mentioned a hamlet at Malga al-Khalil
- the refuge of Khalil. It would seem likely that the castle
here
when Mineo was granted to Bartholomew Lucy
(d.1200)
by the Emperor Henry VI
(d.1197) in 1194 when he made him count of Paterno.
In 1199 Bartholomew gave Mineo to his daughter, Margaret, who was wife
or widow of Count Pain Paris of Avellino. It would seem
likely
that this grant included Mongialino. Early the
next
year Margaret renounced the lands given to her by her now deceased
father and Mongialino passed to Manfred Mazzarino. In May
1272
the Angevin garrison of Mineo was set at the rather large force of 12
knights, while Mazzarino was not mentioned at all. It is
therefore rather surprising that in 1287 it was recorded that both Mazzarino
and Mongialino were seized from John Mazzarino who was described as a son
of Manfred Mongialino. It is possible
that
Manfred Mongialino and the Manfred Mazzarino of 1200 are one and the
same person.
Mongialino castle seems to have usually been royal property from
1200, but before 1320
it had passed under the control of Blasco Lancia who was also lord of Syracuse and Galati. In 1386 the Lancias sold
the castle to Artale Alagona of Mistretta
(d.1389). When he died he left an only daughter, Maria,
as heiress, consequently
King Martin
seized Mineo with its castle of Mongialino and passed it on to William
Raymond Moncada. In 1397 he invested the Statellas of Catania
with the castle and hamlet of Mongialino and they held it until the
abolition of feudalism, despite an attempt by the Cruyllas family of Calatabiano
and the Alagonas in trying to recover it by law in 1410. In
1757
Abbot Vito Amico noted that the castle was almost intact and that there
had been an attempt to revive the nearby settlement in the last century.
Description
The rocky hill on which the castle of Mongialino near Mineo stands
shows evidence of human activity dating back to the twelfth century
BC. The heart of the fortress is a large round tower keep
with a
rectangular bailey to the east. Some battlements still remain
on
the better preserved north wall of this. In the mid
eighteenth
century a gate and drawbridge were still discernable, apparently being
a square gatetower central in the destroyed south curtain
wall.
Chambers ran along the south certain and a big coral or building lay in
the northeast corner. Small round towers are said to have lain at
the 3
exposed corners to northeast, southeast and southwest.
The keep has a diameter of 40' with walls nearly 7' thick.
Intriguingly the tower has a massive internal pillar 27' across from
which vaults make a passageway around it. Within the pillar
is a
water cistern, once fed from the roof. The resulting circular
chamber was about 14' wide and was entered from the east via a simple
ground floor doorway. In the eighteenth century the tower was
of
4 storeys, although now only the well battered ground floor and
fragments of the first floor remains. The upper floor appears
to
be of a similar plan to the basement. Recently it has been
shown
that these chambers were divided into 2 by wooden floors, thus making
the 4 storeys recorded by Amico. Together this makes the
tower
unique.
The western half of the Migaido keep has now collapsed and the remains
show much instability and the potential for further massive
falls. To the south is a singular tall fragment of wall
standing
42' high, which has been interpreted as a battlement due to one side of
it being faced. However, this might be simply a window,
although
traces of a single pitched roof as said to remain in it. The
whole consists of well laid rubble blocks with narrow blocks
occasionally making up levelling courses.
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