The Castle offers the most beautiful view of the Gulf of Naples
Pedro Luis Escrivà, military engineer and director of the Castel Sant'Elmo project, stated that the mountain where the fortress was to rise was so " rugged and jagged " that many people "thought it was practically impossible that it could be built." Despite this, the castle was completed and first became a citadel of the troops and then a military prison, a granite symbol of power and oppression. Remaining for a long period extraneous to the civil development of Naples, Castel Sant'Elmo has today changed its vocation and its urban role, becoming a place of continuous and fruitful dialogue between various arts, disciplines and cultures.
History of the castle
Built on the collapsed remains of a pre-existing fortified residence commissioned by the Angioni, the Fort of Sant’Ermo, and later called Sant’Elmo, was designed by Pedro Luis Escrivà, a military engineer from Valencia, upon the request by Don Pedro de Toledo, viceroy from 1532 to 1553. The construction of the current building began in 1537 and ended in 1547, but an explosion destroyed many of the buildings on the Piazza d'Armi square, which were rebuilt once again between 1599 and 1610. In the midst of the Masaniello revolt in 1647 and the revolutionary uprisings of 1648, the Viceroy Duke of Arcos took refuge in the castle to escape the people's anger. Sant’Elmo was also the centre of the revolution dated 1799, which led to the proclamation of the brief First Neapolitan Republic by a few intellectuals inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution. Used as a prison during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, the fortress went from Military Property to the Superintendence for Artistic and Historical Heritage after impressive restoration works carried out in 1976. Today, the castle is home to the Campania Museum Complex and, since 2010, it has become the Museo del Novecento in the rooms of the high prison on Piazza d'Armi.
Heritage
The Museum houses a permanent collection of works of art created as of 1910 by both Neapolitan artists and artists who were active in the Neapolitan city. The collection perfectly captures the succession of various artistic movements, from the nineteenth-century landscape tradition to futurism, from the "Return to order" of the 1930s to the multiple experiences of the second half of the twentieth century. The castle is also a multifunctional centre thanks to its rich photo library, the "Bruno Molajoli" art history library and its auditorium, ideal for conferences, concerts, theatrical performances and film screenings. Over the years the Museum has hosted several important exhibitions such as that of Antiques and Aero-painting in 1989, which were followed by many other exhibitions, including In the shadow of Vesuvius (1990), Jusepe de Ribera (1993) , Luca Giordano (2001), Gauguin and Brittany (2003) and Gaspare Traversi (2003). From 1998 to 2009, Castel Sant'Elmo also hosted the Napoli Comicon, an event dedicated to the world of comics, animation, video games and role-playing games. Since 2011, the Museum has hosted "Un'opera per il Castello", an international competition for young artists.
