From the height of which it occupies the summit, the castle of Gesualdo majestically dominates the Calore valley.
And it watches protectively over the stone village that grew up around it in the Middle Ages, completely wrapping the sides of the hill up to the fertile lands of the plain below. A precious strategic position for the Lombards, the first architects of the fortress perhaps as early as the sixth century, thanks to the brave Sessualdo or Gesualdo who, in addition to giving it its name, was its first lord. And that garrison proved to be fundamental for the defense of the southern borders of the Principality of Benevento three centuries later, when some scholar established its real foundation for that reason, by the will of Prince Radelchi.
The new Norman rulers also benefited from it. It was Guglielmo d'Altavilla, natural son of Roger the Norman, who transformed it into a fortress, enhancing its defensive characteristics which made it a leading castrum in the system of fortifications of the time. Meanwhile, from 1078, outside the manor, the town had begun to develop. It would continue to expand all around in the following centuries. Domain for five centuries of the new lineage of the Gesualdo, descended from Roger. Lineage to which Carlo Gesualdo belonged. He was the most famous character in the history of the castle and the village, which in fact borrowed from him the definition of City of the Prince of Musicians.
This was how he was renamed by his contemporaries Carlo da Venosa, prolific author of madrigals and sacred compositions, considered the father of polyphonic music and a forerunner of Monteverdi, much appreciated and valued by twentieth century authors, who dedicated songs and works to him. A refined musician, Carlo was the author of a bloody crime that went down in history: the double murder of his wife Maria d'Avalos and her lover Fabrizio Carafa, caught in the act of adultery in the family palace in the center of Naples. Even if he suffered no consequences for his crime, Charles was forced to flee Naples to avoid the revenge of the powerful families of the two victims. And so he took to safety in the ancestral castle of Gesualdo, which had been rebuilt in 1470 after the damage suffered during the Franco-Spanish war. There he was able to devote himself completely to music, as well as having churches and convents built in the country to atone for his crime. When a few years later he married Eleonora d'Este, he decided to convert the castle from its original defensive function to a residential one, making it a prestigious residence, which he also equipped with a theater, to perform his works, and a printing house to produce his books. That was a period of maximum splendor for the Irpinia village and its castle/palace, where the composer hosted artist and literary friends, including the assiduous Torquato Tasso.
Upon the disappearance of Carlo, whose son and heir had died shortly before, the Gesualdo dynasty ended in 1613 and the village passed to the Ludovisi. Her niece Isabella's husband, Niccolò, continued the work of restructuring the building and reorganizing the village. The earthquake of 8 September 1694 made the third floor collapse, then the French troops took care of it and gave it the coup de grace in 1799. Thus the manor was in a very bad state when, in 1855, it was bought by the Caccese family, who reorganized it the internal spaces and provided for the connection with piazza Neviera and, therefore, with the rest of the town. The 1980 earthquake still caused enormous damage to the structures, which in 1913 had been placed under protection. Having become the property of the Municipality of Gesualdo and the Province of Avellino, the castle underwent careful restoration at the beginning of this century. This allowed the courtyard and the south-east wing to be opened to the public in 2015.
THE RESTORED CASTLE AND THE MUSEUM
The irregular quadrilateral plan and the mighty ramparts remain of the Norman castrum, while the five cylindrical towers refer to the Angevin age. The main entrance is located to the west, preceded by an entrance in which the restoration work has also brought to light the sixteenth-century fresco of a Madonna with Child, while the coat of arms of the Gesualdo-Ludovisi family with a rampant black lion is painted on the cross vault. The entrance leads into the courtyard, in the centre of which there is a decorated well, in front of the Renaissance façade which bears the inscription with which Carlo Gesualdo declares himself a descendant of Roger the Norman. The façade has three arches on the courtyard, from the central one you enter the hanging garden with the magnificent panorama of the valley. Still from the courtyard, a staircase leads to the chapel and the rooms in the south-west wing. On the ground floor, there are also the kitchen and the rooms for the servants, while on the lower floor of the courtyard, there are the cellars. The main floor can be reached from the large tower via a spiral staircase; on the third floor, then, is a semicircular loggia overlooking the valley. All environments that are part of the sixteenth-century renovations commissioned by the composer, saved from the renovations of the following centuries.
Currently, the castle can be visited and in the restored rooms it offers interesting multimedia installations on the history of the fortress and on the music of Carlo Gesualdo. The European Centre for Musical Culture pays homage to him with a permanent exhibition of his instruments, reconstructed from seventeenth-century documentation: archlute, chromatic harpsichord, guitar, organ and theorbo. On display with contemporary manuscript and printed scores and with a precious edition of madrigal books by Carlo Gesualdo from the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory in Naples. There is also an exhibition of period clothes exactly reproduced from those in use among the Neapolitan nobles at the end of the sixteenth century.
