Castello di Cly
| Castello di Cly | ||
|---|---|---|
 Castello di Cly |
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| Creation time : | 11th century | |
| Castle type : | Hilltop castle | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Construction: | Quarry stone | |
| Place: | Saint-Denis | |
| Geographical location | 45 ° 44 '57.2 " N , 7 ° 33' 37.1" E | |
| Height: | 770 m | |
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The Castello di Cly is the ruin of a medieval hilltop castle in the district of the same name in the village of Saint-Denis in the Aosta Valley .
description
The castle follows the typology of the so-called "simple" castles, consisting of a tower in the middle, often with a square floor plan, surrounded by a large wall ring that encloses other buildings.
Its original function was that of defense, as you can see from its location: it is located on a ledge at a height of 780 meters and is therefore easy to defend. From there you dominate the village of Chambave and the valley floor from Aosta to Saint-Vincent .
From a petrological point of view, the castle of Cly lies on a relief of zeolite facies , consisting of amphibolite dents, more precisely "it uses the first rocky promontory on the edge of the great instability of the slope that extends to the Castello di Quart ".
history
The site of the medieval system was already in originally and prehistoric settled time as archaeological investigations in 2006 brought to light.
The castle was first mentioned in a document in 1207. The document mentions a "capella sancti Mauricij de castro Cliuo" among the estates of the Priory Saint-Gilles in Verrès . Some dendrological analyzes carried out on wooden structures found inside the keep - probably the oldest building in the castle - made it possible to date it to 1027.
At first, the castle belonged to the Cly branch of the Challants . The leader of this branch of the family was probably Bosone IV , son of the Vice Count of Aosta, Bosone III. who had received the fiefdom and the Castello di Cly from the Counts of Savoy around the middle of the 13th century. The fiefdom consisted of a fairly large area, which included the present-day parishes of Chambave, Saint-Denis, Diémoz , Verrayes and Torgnon , as well as the whole of the Valtournenche . Bosone IV had the castle expanded and fortified so that it got its current size.
After the death of Bosone IV , the castle fell to his son, Bonifacio I. In 1337 Bonifacio I succeeded his son Pietro , a choleric and domineering man who tyrannized his subjects and opposed Count Amadeo IV of Savoy . This finally recognized him from the title and confiscated his goods. From 1376 the castle became the direct property of the Savoy family, who decided to keep it for a few years because of its strategic importance.
For this period, some accurate cost statements were found that contain information about the contents of the castle and the cost of the maintenance work carried out. These include normal costs, such as buying wood or lime to paint the walls, but also more extensive costs, such as repairing walls and re-roofing. An important cost settlement concerns the castle's water supply, which received running water through a wooden pipe system that tapped a spring on the hill above the castle.
The Savoy ruled the castle for about two centuries. As a result, the castle and the surrounding fiefs were assigned to different families until they fell to the Roncas family from Châtel-Argent in 1634 . At the end of the 17th century the castle was abandoned and some of the building blocks were used by the Roncas to build a more comfortable house in Chambave. For the castle, this marked the beginning of a decline to the current ruinous state, interrupted only in the early 1900s when the historian Tancredi Tibaldi bought the building at the expense of the municipality of Saint-Dénis, of which he was the syndic.
The castle, which still belongs to the municipality of Saint-Dénis, is open to the public and can be visited with a guide in summer.
Johanneta Cauda: The first witch at the stake in the Aosta Valley
The documents of the Savoy castle "Errores gazariorum", a compendium on witchcraft in the western Alps, tell the story of Johanneta Cauda , the first woman to be accused of witchcraft in this Alpine region and, in particular, her grandchildren together with a friend to have eaten. At that time the castle was the administrative and judicial center of the rulership and the keep housed the prisons: Johanneta Cauda spent 71 days there before she moved to Chambave, near the castle, on August 11, 1428, the day of St. Lawrence . the patron saint of the place, was publicly burned at the stake. As was the custom at the time, the castellan provided wood and brush for the pyre free of charge.
The castle
The Castello di Cly is a typical, "simple" castle of the Aosta Valley, which consists of a keep in the middle, surrounded by a wide curtain wall, which includes a number of other buildings in addition to the keep. In the case of the Castello di Cly, the curtain wall is almost completely preserved. It was crowned by battlements and encompassed an area of around 2800 m². Its western part was always free of buildings and consisted of an esplanade on which the local population found refuge in the event of an enemy attack. The area in the south, on the other hand, housed buildings that were built in different epochs between the 11th and 14th centuries, including the massive tower in the middle, the chapel, the kitchens, the cattle sheds, the guard's house and the castellan's living quarters. In the north-west corner one can discover the remains of a tower, under which there is an underground cistern for collecting water; it was plastered with Opus signinum so that its walls were waterproof.
The castle's most imposing building was certainly the keep, the massive tower in the middle. It is a donjon with a footprint of about 9.4 meters by 9 meters and a height of 18 meters, which was built on a rock to offer greater resistance to undermining (a small tunnel was dug under the foundation of the tower, the then suddenly collapsed). The tower had three floors and its entrance was several meters above the ground, a defensive measure that can also be seen in many other donjons from this period, including those of the Castello di Graines and that of the Castello di Châtelard . Initially, a wooden ladder served as an access aid, later it was replaced by a stone staircase, which was supported by a flying buttress that has since collapsed. Over the years, the tower must have undergone some renovations, as shown by a walled-up door and some walled-up windows.
Leaning against the tower are the remains of the small Romanesque chapel, which was dedicated to Saint Mauritius and probably dates from the 11th century. The east-facing apse originally had frescoes with figures of angels and those of saints and evangelists, as can be seen in some drawings by Alfredo d'Andrade and the scripts by Carlo Nigra from the beginning of the 20th century. Today only a few fragments are preserved.
The residential buildings and the guard's house, which are located in the southernmost part of the castle, have now fallen into ruins and can hardly be recognized.
Individual evidence
- ^ Francesco Prinetti: Andar per sassi. Le rocce alpine fra natura e cultura. Valle d'Aosta, Canavese, Valsesia . Musumeci, Quart 2010. ISBN 978-88-7032-857-8 . Pp. 36-37.
- ↑ Philippe Curdy, Mauro Cortellazzo, Stefan Ansermet: Gamsen (Valais) et Château de Cly (Vallée d'Aoste): deux ateliers de production de bracelets en pierre à l'âge ollaire di Fer . In: Bulletin d'etudes prehistoriques et archeologiques alpines . Société valdôtaine de préhistoire et d'archéologie. Pp. 421-424. October 14, 2012. Archived from the original on February 22, 2017. Retrieved on May 14, 2020.
- ↑ Il castello di Cly . Inalto.org. Retrieved May 14, 2020.
- ↑ Al Castello di Cly Ezio Gerbore racconta la storia della "strega" Johanneta cauda, arsa viva nel 1428 . 12VDA.it. August 4, 2010. Archived from the original on March 4, 2017. Retrieved on May 15, 2020.
swell
- EE Gerbore, B. Orlandoni: Il Castello di Cly - storia ed evoluzione di un castello valdostano . Le château, Aosta 1998, ISBN 88-87214-13-1 .
- Mauro Minola, Beppe Ronco: Valle d'Aosta. Castello e fortificazioni . Macchione, Varese 2002. ISBN 88-8340-116-6 . P. 31.
- André Zanotto: Castelli valdostani . Musumeci, Quart 2002 (1980). ISBN 88-7032-049-9 .
- Carlo Nigra: Torri e castelli e case forte del Piemonte dal 1000 al secolo XVI. La Valle d'Aosta . Musumeci, Quart 1974. p. 33.
- EE Gerbore: Castello di Cly . Musumeci, Quart 2004. ISBN 88-7032-728-0 .
- Francesco Corni: Valle d'Aosta medievale . Tipografia Testolin, Sarre 2005.
- Gabriele Sartorio: Cly: storia e restauro di un castello “in bilico” . In: Environnement: ambiente e territorio in Valle d'Aosta . 2011. Retrieved May 15, 2020.
Web links
- Castello di Cly a Saint-Denis . Regione Valle d'Aosta. Retrieved May 15, 2020.
- Il castello di Cly a Saint-Denis . Unité des communes valdôtaines du Mont Cervin. Retrieved May 15, 2020.
- Website of the municipality of Saint-Denis . Retrieved May 15, 2020.