Starting dall'899 until the year 1000 and the Hungarians, fierce Mongol archers have spread to the Friuli plain carry out bloody raids. The noble families were concerned then to fortify the castles of Friuli with the construction given in fief to vassals Germans as did also the Patriarch of Aquileia and the Bishop of Trieste in order to build a minimum of defense to protect their fiefdoms.
Just as happened with the Castle St. Servolo , Was, probably, in this historical context that arose in the Old Castle Duino to 40 feet high on a rocky outcrop 500 meters west of the manor, almost at the mouth of Timavo.
From evocative ruins survived time and the man is clear that the old castle was made up of a square tower of two or three floors, with wooden stairs that leads to the higher levels, surrounded by walls battlements that followed the edge of the cliff.
In one corner there was a cistern for rainwater, a brick building almost completely destroyed and almost certainly repair the roofs, wooden animals. The cliff was connected to the mainland by a narrow ridge of rock bounded by a wall that made it even more narrow passage. It 'obvious that this fortress, designed to Spartan on a limited area, it was impregnable.
are uncertain about the news that seems to be the lords of feudal Duino of the first Marquis of Istria and the Patriarch of Aquileia then. Duin I had big titles in the aristocracy of the time but grew in importance to possess an extensive karst terrain that went to River.
The story gives us Hugh VI of Duino, character charismatic adventurer.
After being captain of the Counts of Gorizia, in 1366 became feudal and Captain of the Dukes of Habsburg. Its history is often intertwined with that of Trieste which Hugh was a near dangerous but valuable. In fact, during the siege of the city by the Venetians in 1369, Hugh sent 40 riders to the rescue actions that led to disorder in Istria to ease the pressure on Trieste. The following year, when the city, now at its lowest, offered for dedication to the Dukes of Austria did not fall into the hands of the Venetians, Hugh put at the disposal of the Habsburgs with a hundred horsemen following pages, footmen and grooms. When, in 1382, Trieste it definitely gave Austria to Leopold, Hugh was appointed Captain of the city and held office until his death (1391). In 1389 Duke Albert of Austria got the permission to build the new castle.
At his death the castle and estate passed to the family who owned Walsee Romberto who married the daughter of Hugh, Cattarina. It was this powerful Swabian family, loyal to the Habsburgs, who had finished building the new castle in the fourteenth century. on the ruins of a Roman outpost.
The primary structures of the new castle have almost disappeared.
In 1470, resisted a bloody assault by the Turks.
Walsee In 1472 the castle surrendered to the Emperor Frederick III of Habsburg. In 1508 the Venetians took possession of the castle returned to the possessions of the House of Austria when the Emperor Maximilian recaptured and made it the headquarters for his captain. They entered it in the castle's Hoffer. With the death of Matt Hoffer in battle in 1587, the castle passed to Raymond VI of the Tower who married the daughter Ludovica and at the death of this sister, Clare.
The new ruler was part of a powerful family of Lombard bankers who held the monopoly of the postal service in the Empire. A branch of this family is still the owner of Castel rate Vipiteno I visited recently and which I will write in another post.
In 1653 the castle became a wholly owned subsidiary of Torriani as a ransom for a large loan made to the Emperor. The feud that had depended quite large with about sixty villages karst.
In 1783, the last of the Torriani died leaving no male heirs. His daughter married the Prince of Hohenlohe, and the castle was still readily available for about a century when the Countess Marie of Hohenlohe convinces her husband, Prince Alexander of Torre and Tasso to buy the mother-in-law.
the end of the 800, so the banner of Torriani returned to wave the ancient Roman tower. This family should be the most impressive renovation of the castle, especially in the seventeenth century, transformed the castle by building war in princely residence.
The prestige of the family over the centuries was enhanced by partnerships with major European families: the Gonzaga of Mantua to the real Greece and Denmark, from Napoleon to the Czar of Russia and the real England.
In 1917 the castle was a heavy artillery bombardment by the Italian who destroyed good Part of its ancient buildings. In the twenties was reconstructed respecting the original architecture.
Part of the stables and guest houses were sold to United World College of the Adriatic.
Like any self-respecting castle, Duino also has a legend to tell, a legend related to the old manor.
The Legend of the White Lady. The latter was the wife of a cruel and violent man who, one day, in a fit of anger, threw down the walls of the old castle. But the sky did not let the unfortunate one crashing on the underlying rocks and turned to stone. At the base of the cliff is, in fact, clearly visible from the sea, a rock shaped as a woman veiled in melancholy attitude.
The legend continues by saying that some nights the White Lady is revived and vaguely desperate for the ruins of the castle looking for the birthplace of her child.
Another story is related to the rock, which is Dante's in the inlet between the old and the new castle and that, at low tide is reached by a narrow strip of rock.
It seems that on this rock was to meditate the great poet in the periods in which he was host of the Lords of Duino.
While the stay of Dante there is no certainty, a physicist in 1764 shows a curious news. On the tower of the old castle was a maid on call was responsible for watching the boats to hit the channel Timavo and reporting of the storms. When these were manifested in the distance, the guard sounded a bell to warn sailors and farmers. One day the guard with the tip of his pike accidentally touched the wire that activated a bell emitting a spark. Witnessed the phenomenon for a monaco case of the Convent of the servants who, after reflecting on the phenomenon, devised a sort of rudimentary weather station. The tower poses an iron rod sharpened. From time to time the guard approached his pike to the iron tip, if between the two was created a spark was a sign of an impending storm and had to raise the alarm.
But back to the story more or less contemporary.
At the end of the nineteenth century, two women from very thick, Teresa Thurn-Hofer Valsassina and his daughter Maria von Thurn und Taxis, the living room of the castle opened to the best names in contemporary European art and culture . And so were the guests of the composers Johann Strauss and Duino Franz Liszt, Princess Elisabeth of Austria (Sissi), Archduke Maximilian of Hapsburg and his wife Princess Charlotte of Belgium (owners of nearby Castello di Miramare ), the 'Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria just before going to meet his tragic fate in Sarajevo, poets and writers like Mark Twain, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Paul Valéry, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rainer Maria Rilke which I have already spoken on the occasion of the visit of path that bears his name . More recently Prince Raimondo della Torre e Tasso has hosted famous scientists around the Centre for Theoretical Physics Miramare and, also, Prince Charles of Wales and the Archduke Otto of Habsburg. Raymond was an emblematic figure of his time, idealistic and cosmopolitan, the first in the Adriatic, the flag hoisted on the castle of a united Europe and was one of the founders of the aforementioned Centre for Theoretical Physics Miramare and the United World College Adriatic.
The castle is now the residence of the third Duke of Castel Duino, Carlo Alessandro della Torre e Tasso (von Thurn und Taxis), which opened to visitors
and social events along with the magnificent park with its romantic alleys
decorated with antique statues and sculptures, fountains,
balconies and terraces open on 'immensity of the sea.
The building looks like a composite construction and heavy, coming in the yard Castle
immediately struck by the soaring tower sixteenth cha preserves its structure as two thousand years attests to the memorial of a visit of the Emperor Diocletian in the third century. AD
Inside the castle are open 15 rooms with furniture, paintings, precious objects, books
collected for centuries and the memories that give a 'elegant and warm atmosphere.
The location of the visit, which lasts an hour and a half, gives way to admire the precious piano by Liszt.
A masterpiece of architecture is the scale of Palladio.
really impressive is the panorama from the tower
that spans 360 degrees from the Karst to the sea.
In the visit to the castle you can also visit the bunker, which has an area of \u200b\u200b400 square meters. to a depth of 18 meters.
was built in 1943 by the German Kriegsmarine TODT for defending the base against a possible Allied landing Sistiana. La Venezia Giulia was part of the zone of operations "Adriatisches Küstenland. In 1944, the base welcomed the Sistiana "Kleinkampfmittel Flottille 411" with its mini-submarine molche (Triton). Many locals, before the bunker was armed with a gun, took refuge inside when the alarm goes off for the bombing. From 1945 to 1954, the bunker housed a fuel depot in the British army. Since 2006 he has been open to the public testimony of those tragic years.
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