PIAZZA ARMERINA ENNA PORTA DELLA CASTELLINA

CastellinaLa/city gates of porta della Castellina (Pr ' tusg ' Cast ' ddina) After a few decades since the beginning of the reconstruction, Placia increases of population and extension. This expansion gives rise to the need to have any defense to any enemy aggression.

So begins the construction of the city walls which also include strategically placed ports, taking into account the needs of the population. So over the decades and centuries, depending on the size and orientation of living streams, several doors of which there are at least 7.

The first is the "Castellina" (in an old city map of 1689 called Porta Castellana) who was born perhaps unexpectedly (or that already existed and then enlarged) following an incident.

We are in 1299, Platie, as it is called in this period, is assailed franco-Angevin troops of Duke Robert I of Anjou. But the inhabitants, then under the Aragonese, aided by about sixty Knights Templar and Hospitallers of garrison in the city, led by Lloyd Abbot and William Calcerando, attack enemies on the level of Patrisanto today Theatines (then outside the walls and walking distance from their commandery of St John the Baptist), forcing them to lift the siege.

During this siege the French soldiers manage to create a breach in the walls to defend the village below the castle called "Castrum Reginae". Since then the village was called "borgo della Castellina" and the gap was used as a door on the north side of the city overlooking the Valley called Valle Rocca.

PIAZZA ARMERINA ENNA PORTA DELLA CASTELLINA

GAETANO MASUZZO, Piazza Armerina