Sunday 19 July 2015

Castel Aragonese

17 July, we left Procida, to go look at Castle Aragonese. There has been a fort on that island since 400 BC and it has always been a fortification. At the height of it's usage, it house approx 1890 people, a Prince, 13 churches. It is quite an imposing fortification, alas, it was shelled to crap, by the British who were trying to dislodge the French from the fort.. This fort was then sold to a private owner - WTF, this is a wierd country... We took a tour round the castle and it was impressive even in it's diminished state, we then went for dinner and back to the boats.
Looking up at the Fort from the entrance

Looking from the convent to the mainland
The fort used to be an Island, but at some point one of the rulers decided to build a wooden causeway and later a stone causeway.
Death chairs
These chairs were in a crypt, in the Clarisses convent. The nuns, once they died, were placed placed on these chairs, special containers were placed under the chairs and the flesh would drop off the skeleton and once all the flesh had fallen off, the bones were placed in and osiary. The creepy part is the living nuns were obliged to spend a few hours a day in the crypts pondering on death and the insignificance of the body, which was only a vessel for the spirit(rough quote from the guide brochure).
View of the harbour

Church dome
 The church was never finished as the head nun at the time had delusions of grandeur and opted for a really fancy church, the means to pay for it were not part of her plan..

Porcida on the left and the mainland further behind

Last usable church
 There were numerous churches on the island, but this one is one of the remaining intact ones, this one was largely attended by fishermen
View of harbour

Remains of Cathederal
 The Cathedral was build by the locals as the one on the mainland had been destroyed by a volcano so they built one on the island.
Comfy chair - NOT!
 On exiting the fort, they had on display torture instruments and war instruments, some of these things were pretty sick (not in the hip way) - you would tell them *ANYTHING* they wanted even confess..
The rack

Variation on the rack - those spikes would strip the flesh from ones back

Castle Aragonese

Shot taken at night

Farewell Castle Aragonese
We left the next day to go to Naples, I will be spending 3 days, there one to see Naples, one Mt Vesuvius and the other Pompei.

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