Castello Barbarossa

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Castello Barbarossa is a ruined fortress and an ornithological research site in Anacapri on the island of Capri, Italy. It is named after the pirate Hayreddin Barbarossa, who attacked the fort in 1535 and destroyed it in 1544.

The castle’s construction date is uncertain, but it probably dates from the late 9th century. It existed at least by the end of the 10th century. The Dukes of Amalfi built the fortress to control Capri, and its early owners included Adelferio, son of Sergius II, who in 988 donated the castle to Giovanni, Count of Capri. The fortress helped protect the area during the 10th and 11th centuries, and the Normans later modernized it, adding a chapel with a vaulted vault. In the 13th century a cylindrical tower and protective walls were added to meet new siege technologies.

In the 15th century Capri faced Muslim pirate raids, and the fortress served as a refuge. After the 1535 raid led by Barbarossa and Dragut, the castle was destroyed in 1544. The Angevins tried to rebuild it, but the work failed, and the people of Anacapri eventually cared for what remained, leaving the fortress largely unreconstructed. It was largely forgotten until the 18th century, when it appeared in geographical treaties. In the early 1800s the British and French reinforced the site for military use, building rifle embrasures, a powder house, and a defensive wall extending to the Phoenician Steps.

In the 19th century scholars described the site as a “ruin in a wild setting,” and in the early to mid-20th century it appeared on Capri’s maps and guides. In 1898 the castle and surrounding land were bought by the Swedish psychiatrist Axel Munthe, who used the place as a bird sanctuary and opposed hunting. After his death, the castle became part of the Axel Munthe Foundation under the Swedish Consulate.

The castle has a quadrangular plan with a semicircular wall. Its highest ruins include the former residential area, a chapel with a vaulted apse, a belfry, and a cistern. Other rooms include a vaulted roof, an arched opening, and an iron-beamed room. The fort’s two towers show its military purpose: a square Swabian-era tower and a circular Angevin-era tower. Castello Barbarossa sits in Anacapri’s Villa San Michele district near the Grotta dell’Arco, about 412 meters above sea level on a small plateau of 250 square meters on Mount Solaro. The surrounding landscape features drought-tolerant plants such as strawberry tree, coronilla, euphorbia, heathers, gorse, and myrtle, with winter blooms of anemone and crocus.

Today the site hosts Capri’s ornithological station. Mount Solaro is an important stopover for migratory birds traveling between Europe and Africa. The station began with the Italian League for Bird Protection in the early 1980s and is now linked to the Ringing Centre of the Institute for Protection and Environmental Research of Bologna. Migratory birds are netted, measured, weighed, and ringed to track their movements and origins. Swedish experts from the island of Öland assist with projects on bird orientation during long migrations, diseases carried by birds, and butterfly migrations.