Castell de Capdepera

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Castell de Capdepera
West side of the Castell de Capdepera

West side of the Castell de Capdepera

Creation time : 1300 to 1386
Conservation status: Preserved essential parts
Construction: Limestone - masonry ( Marès )
Place: Capdepera
Geographical location 39 ° 42 '16 "  N , 3 ° 25' 59.5"  E Coordinates: 39 ° 42 '16 "  N , 3 ° 25' 59.5"  E
Height: 159  msnm
Castell de Capdepera (Balearic Islands)
Castell de Capdepera

Castell de Capdepera ('Castle of Capdepera') refers to the remaining buildings and fortifications of a former fortified village from the 14th century on the Spanish Balearic island of Mallorca . You are on the 159 meter high Puig de Capdepera in the northeast of the island. The capital of the easternmost municipality of Mallorca, Capdepera, extends southeast to southwest of the castle . The Castell de Capdepera has been registered as a " Monument " ( Bien de Interés Cultural ) since 1993 under the number RI-51-0008396 .

Location and description

View over the curtain wall to Capdepera
Model of the castle

The fortifications built under the kings of the House of Barcelona on the Puig de Capdepera are 1.9 kilometers from the east coast of Mallorca at Sa Pedruscada and Son Moll . In the valley to the south of the Castell de Capdepera in front of the elevations of the 169 meter high Puig Saguer in the southeast and the 234 meter high Puig de sa Cova Negre in the south, today's Capdepera extends in an east-west direction. The main street of the village is relieved by a bypass road, the MA-15, which goes around the Puig de Capdepera to the north. The entrance to the Castle of Capdepera can be reached via Carrer del Castell ('Burgstrasse').

The fortification wall of the Castell de Capdepera encloses an approximately triangular area of ​​8069 m², which rises to the north. At the north corner of the complex is the church of the castle, the Església de Nostra Senyora de l'Esperança (14th-18th centuries). Its northwest and northeast sides are part of the outer wall of the fortification. Immediately to the south-east there is a platform from which the battlement of the curtain wall with the parapet goes off.

The eastern fortification wall is about 75 meters long and has two attached defense towers , the Torre d'en Banya and the Torre de ses Dames ('Tower of the Ladies'). At the southern end of the east wall, the curtain wall swings 25 meters to the southwest to the defense tower Torre de sa Boira ('Fog Tower') next to the main entrance (Portalet) from the 16th century. The approximately 80 meters long southwest wall has a defense tower in the middle, the Torre des Costerans , and in the west a second entrance to the interior of the castle, which is called Portal del Rei en Jaume ('Gate of King Jacob') and is at the end of the 17th / beginning was completely remodeled in the 18th century. The towerless north-west wall is about 100 meters long from the west corner to the church in the north.

Nostra Senyora de l'Esperança
Torre d'en Miquel Nunis

At the highest point of the castle is the Torre d'en Miquel Nunis (10th-12th centuries) from the Islamic era of Mallorca. The former defense tower standing on a brick square was originally 10 meters high, almost twice as high as it is today, and made of clay . In the Torre d'en Miquel Nunis there is a spiral staircase that was part of a mill built in the 19th century inside the tower . The church to the northwest was built in three phases. First the small chapel to the right of the entrance and the front part of the main nave were built. After a restoration in the 16th century, the rear part of the main nave was added to the small church in honor of Sant Joan (' John the Baptist '). The side chapels were built at the beginning of the 18th century. After 1840 the church was no longer used because a larger one was available in the village below the castle. In 1871, the church of Castell de Capdepera was consecrated to Verge de l'Esperança (' Virgin in Hope '), venerated since the 16th century .

Casa del Governador
Cisterna (cistern)

Right next to the church, on the southeast side of it, is a cistern (14th century). The rainwater catchment basin is one of the first structures in the castle. The water was drawn to the surface similar to a draw well via a shaft and a ring of wells . The small size of the cistern suggests that it was only built for emergencies such as sieges. Fifteen meters south of the Torre d'en Miquel Nunis is the restored Casa del Governador , the governor's house (18th century). It houses the Museum des Castells, which provides information on both the history of Capdepera and the traditional handicrafts of palm leaf weaving from the leaves of the dwarf palms , which shaped the economy of the municipality of Capdepera at the beginning of the 20th century.

Hardly any remains of the up to 150 houses in the former village have survived. Some of them were built on the outer walls or the retaining walls that secured the sloping terrain within the circular wall. Some fragments of houses were found during archaeological excavations on the southwest wall, one of the houses has been restored.

history

In Roman navigation maps, the Punta de Capdepera , the cape east of Cala Rajada , is named as Caput Petrae ('rock spike'). The name of the place Capdepera is derived from this Latin name. After the conquest of Mallorca by King James I of Aragón in 1229, the stretch of coast near Capdepera was of particular strategic importance with regard to the still Almohad - Muslim island of Manūrqa ( Menorca ) in the northeast. It is 37 kilometers away from the Punta de Capdepera .

Treaty of Capdepera

In his Llibre dels feits del rei en Jacme ('Book of the Deeds of King Jacob'), James I describes a ruse from June 1231:

“On this day we reached the cap dela pera (Capdepera), which can be seen with the naked eye from the island of Menorca . We called all our people together and ordered them to light more than three hundred fires in the countryside to give the impression that an entire army had camped here. When the Saracens saw the fires, they called our emissaries to find out what was to be seen there. The delegates replied that it was the army of King James I who was preparing the invasion of Menorca from there "

- Jacob I. (Jaume I.)

After the ignition of the fires was repeated on several subsequent nights, the Qādī of Manūrqa , the Faqīh (legal scholar) Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad, and the sheikhs of the island signed the Treaty of Capdepera on June 17, 1231 in the Torre d'en Miquel Nunis . The signatories also included the later Raʾīs of Manūrqa Abū ʿUthmān Saʾīd, who ruled Menorca from 1232 until his death in 1282. In the contract the Muslim Menorca recognized the sovereignty of King James and his successors and undertook to surrender the castle of Medina Manūrqa ( Ciutadella ) and annual tribute in kind . The document of the contract is today in the French National Library in Paris .

Torre d'en Miquel Nunis

As the second son of Jacob I, Jacob II inherited the Kingdom of Mallorca . In 1300 he planned a fortified city with a defensive wall and moat on an area of ​​82,525 m² around the Torre d'en Miquel Nunis . The founding of Capdepera was intended to bring together the scattered population in this part of Mallorca to control and defend the sparsely populated area and to control the sea routes to Menorca. The king supported the construction with financial means, but many residents of the area refused to leave their previous homes to move to a place that was cramped and where they could not keep their animals. This is how the fortified village of Capdepera was created in the style of the Gothic military architecture of the time, only on less than a tenth of the area originally intended by Jacob II. The first buildings were the church and the cistern. The fortification ring wall, initially without towers, enclosed a triangular base; In the Middle Ages, the triangle was a symbol of God, a symbol of the Holy Trinity . After completion of the outer wall of the castle, the defense towers were placed in front to monitor the outer area and to better defend the curtain wall.

Main nave of the church

The first church of the Castell de Capdepera was much smaller than the current one and probably had a tiled roof on a wooden beam construction. The originally preserved altar has a figure of Christ carved from orange wood in Gothic style , which is dated to the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th century. The painting on the figure has faded to the present day. Some parts, such as the crown of thorns and the cross , are missing today. The altar figure of the first church hangs in a current side chapel, which corresponds to the chancel of the original building. The church was extended to the northeast at the end of the 16th century and the main nave was given this orientation so that the altar was now in the northeast. The building was given the appearance of a windowless fortified church . The additions to the side chapels at the beginning of the 18th century also corresponded to this external appearance. In the interior a baroque chapel was built in 1703 , which was dedicated to the Virgin of the Rosary . Only after the ecclesiastical use of the building was interrupted from 1840 to 1871, the church, previously consecrated to Sant Joan , was now renamed Església de Nostra Senyora de l'Esperança .

Portal del Rei en Jaume

From the initial 50 houses in the fortified village with around 200 residents, there were 150 houses by the end of the 16th century, as can be seen in documents from 1595. This was due to the frequent attacks by Ottoman corsairs on the coastal areas of Mallorca. Many rural residents now sought refuge in the walled Castell de Capdepera. The only gate to the Castell until then, the Portal del Rei en Jaume , was supplemented by another in the southeast at the beginning of the 16th century. Both entrances were connected by a straight street parallel to the southwest wall in front of the houses attached to them. Other streets were arranged in the same east-west orientation up the mountain in stages to the Torre d'en Miquel Nunis . From the 17th century more and more Capdepera residents settled at the foot of the castle. With the transfer of the Spanish crown to the Bourbons at the beginning of the 18th century and an associated administrative reform, the defense of the Castell de Capdepera passed from the population to a small military unit of mounted soldiers. The supreme command was given to a governor who resided in the newly built governor's house. Fewer and fewer civilians now lived inside the castle, so that by 1789 only 25 houses were inhabited, while outside the fortifications there were 208 houses.

Interior of the castle

The emigration of the residents of the castle continued in the 19th century, so in 1820 there were 12 houses still inhabited by civilians, in 1865 only 4 houses. One of the reasons for this was the difficult relationship between civil and military administrations. A landowner wanted to build a mill in the Torre d'en Miquel Nunis at the beginning of the 19th century and had already demolished half of the old square tower and started to build the round mill body when the military governor ordered him to stop work. In 1854 the military left the Castell de Capdepera, which was auctioned in 1862. Except for the renewed use of the church from 1871 with the consent of the owners and the influx of some immigrants into the tower buildings and individual rooms of the curtain wall, the castle remained deserted. Prickly pear cacti spread wildly and small areas were used for agriculture by representatives of the owners (els donats) . Trees were also planted, such as carob trees , figs and oaks . At the same time, the restoration and reconstruction of collapsed parts of the wall began. At the end of the 19th century, the curtain wall received historicizing battlements and loopholes.

Today's entrance area (portalet)

When the church was repaired several times at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, it was covered with stone slabs. The presbytery was redesigned and a new rectory was built. To facilitate the processions , around 1910 a wide, less winding path was laid along the northwest wall up to the church. With regard to the church, it is worth mentioning that the statue of Verge de l'Esperança in its current form was not made until 1966. Before that only the head and hands were preserved. A Madrid sculptor completed the statue in Gothic style. Apart from the church, the castle was rarely used from 1920. For better accessibility, a staircase was built from 1954 from Capdepera, the former suburb, to Portalet , today's main entrance. In 1979, the first democratic municipal administration of Capdepera was constituted after the end of Franquism . On May 9, 1983, the owners of the castle and the representatives of the municipality signed a deed of donation , according to which the castle de Capdepera became the property of the citizens of Capdepera. A municipal castle patronage was established, which is dedicated to the conservation, repair and restoration of the monument.

Others

View to the southwest

The Castell de Capdepera can be visited for a small fee. The opening times are daily from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., from March 16 to October 14 until 8:00 p.m. The interior is closed to visitors on January 1st and 6th. Every third weekend of May there is a medieval market inside the castle .

On May 30, 2013, a 74-year-old German fell four meters from the stone circular path by the castle wall and suffered fatal head injuries. She died in Manacor hospital on the day of the fall . The circular route was not secured by a railing for monument protection reasons. At the end of 2013, a metal railing was installed along the circular route.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lista del Ministerio del Interior. WML files. wmflabs.org, accessed November 17, 2012 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Mateu Riera: Castell de Capdepera. History - The Christian Conquest. www.castellcapdepera.com, August 12, 2009, accessed November 17, 2012 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Mateu Riera: Castell de Capdepera. Visit - 5th fortress wall. www.castellcapdepera.com, August 12, 2009, accessed November 17, 2012 .
  4. ↑ Mateu Riera: Castell de Capdepera. Visit - 1st watchtower, Torre d'en Miquel Nunis . www.castellcapdepera.com, August 12, 2009, accessed November 17, 2012 .
  5. ↑ a b Mateu Riera: Castell de Capdepera. Visit - 4th church. www.castellcapdepera.com, August 12, 2009, accessed November 17, 2012 .
  6. ↑ Mateu Riera: Castell de Capdepera. Visit - 3rd water cistern. www.castellcapdepera.com, August 12, 2009, accessed November 17, 2012 .
  7. ↑ a b Patronage de Castell de Capdepera (ed.): Castell de Capdepera . Levon, Cala Rajada 1997, El Castell, p. 10 .
  8. ↑ Mateu Riera: Castell de Capdepera. Visit - 6th Governor's House, 18th century, Palm Leaf Weaving Museum. www.castellcapdepera.com, August 12, 2009, accessed November 17, 2012 .
  9. ↑ Mateu Riera: Castell de Capdepera. Visit - 7. Archaeological excavations. www.castellcapdepera.com, August 12, 2009, accessed November 17, 2012 .
  10. ↑ Jacob I (Jaume I): Llibre dels feits del rei en Jacme . Sotmetiment de Menorca pel Tractat de Capdepera, p. 60 ( online [accessed November 17, 2012]).
  11. ↑ Patronage de Castell de Capdepera (ed.): Castell de Capdepera . Levon, Cala Rajada 1997, El Castell, p. 3 .
  12. ^ Damian J. Smith, Helena Buffery: The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon . A Translation of the Medieval Catalan Llibre Dels Fets . Ashgate, Farnham / Burlington 2003, The Conquest of Majorca, p. 130 ( online [accessed November 17, 2012]).
  13. ↑ Tractat de Capdepera signed entre Jaume I i els musulmans de Menorca, que el reconeixen com a senyor. Arxiu virtual Jaume I, June 17, 1231, accessed November 17, 2012 (Latin).
  14. ↑ Patronage de Castell de Capdepera (ed.): Castell de Capdepera . Levon, Cala Rajada 1997, El Castell, p. 5 .
  15. ↑ Patronage de Castell de Capdepera (ed.): Castell de Capdepera . Levon, Cala Rajada 1997, El Castell, p. 9 .
  16. ↑ Patronage de Castell de Capdepera (ed.): Castell de Capdepera . Levon, Cala Rajada 1997, El Castell, p. 6 .
  17. ↑ Patronage de Castell de Capdepera (ed.): Castell de Capdepera . Levon, Cala Rajada 1997, El Castell, p. 11 .
  18. ↑ Patronage de Castell de Capdepera (ed.): Castell de Capdepera . Levon, Cala Rajada 1997, The progressive abandonment of the castle in the 18th and 19th centuries, p. 12 .
  19. ↑ Patronage de Castell de Capdepera (ed.): Castell de Capdepera . Levon, Cala Rajada 1997, The progressive abandonment of the castle in the 18th and 19th centuries, p. 14 .
  20. ↑ a b Patronage de Castell de Capdepera (ed.): Castell de Capdepera . Levon, Cala Rajada 1997, The Castle, p. 15/16 .
  21. ↑ Patronage de Castell de Capdepera (ed.): Castell de Capdepera . Levon, Cala Rajada 1997, The Castle, p. 17 .
  22. ↑ Mateu Riera: Castell de Capdepera. Information. www.castellcapdepera.com, August 12, 2009, accessed November 17, 2012 .
  23. ↑ S. Schuster, I. Thor: When monument protection becomes a risk . Mallorca Zeitung , Palma June 6, 2013, p. 7 ( Online [accessed June 9, 2013]).
  24. ↑ Capdepera secures the castle wall with a railing. Consequences drawn from a fatal accident. In: Mallorca Magazin . December 17, 2013, accessed December 18, 2013 .

Web links

Commons : Castell de Capdepera  - Collection of images, videos and audio files