The Castle of Santa Severa, is one of the most suggestive places of Lazio, near Rome. Situated along the Tyrrhenian coast to the north of Rome, owes its current name to the young Christian martyr severe, that here was murdered on 5 June 298 A.D. together with his brothers, Calendino and Marco, under the empire of Diocletian. To her was dedicated the Paleochristian church, dated to the second half of the V century or in the early decades of the VI century, found in the modern era and currently visible, in part, in the Piazza della Rocca. The Etruscan settlement of Pirgy became the seat in the first half of the III century, of a Roman colony (Castrum) whose remains are present in the walls of the fortification. The side facing the sea, instead, is only visible in the cellars of the hall of the “legnaia”. The area is still suffering a metamorphosis in the imperial age that from ‘camp military’ is transformed into a residence of rich Roman families owning luxurious villas on the sea. On the remains of buildings of Roman and late ancient extends a vast cemetery, installed starting at least from the IX century and used presumably up to the XIII-XIV century.
The structure of the castle itself is has only in the XIV century. The complex, a rectangular plan with angular towers, was surrounded by a moat and connected by a wooden deck to the imposing fortification cylindrical, the “male”, anciently called “Tower of the Castle”, which was built in the middle of the IX century by Pope Leo X and that as a result of further reconstructions, came to us in its structure to the sixteenth-seventeenth century. The first written documentation of the castle dates back to 1068, the year in which the castle and the Church were donated by the count of Norman origin, Gerardo di Galeria, to Farfa Abbey that in 1130 under Pope Anacleto II, donated it to turn the confreres of S. Paul. In 1482 Pope Sixtus IV donated it to the Order of the Holy Spirit who was the owner for five hundred years, until 1980.
Precisely in this period, under the aegis of the Holy Spirit, takes life the Borgo (between the XV and the XVI century) in which it is visible in every part of the typical coat of arms of the Order: the patriarchal cross. After a long period of decadence, the castle was also used by the Germans as a strategic base in the course of the second world war.
Opening times:
From Tuesday to Sunday, from April to September: 10-19.
Dttobre, November and March: 10-15.
December, January and February: 10-14.
The ticket office closes an hour before.
Evening Openings 2017:
June and September, every Saturday: 20-24.
July and August, every Friday, Saturday and Sunday: 10-24.
info@castellodisantasevera.it