| The Castle of Trani was built by Emperor Frederick II of Swabia in the thirteenth century on the site of a small guard tower refers to the Xth - XIth , found under the floor of the entrance. It was an important landmark on the coast of Puglia system castle of Frederick II. Model of the crusader castles of the Holy Land, in turn indebted to the Romans Castra, was simple and functional quadrangular, reinforced at the top by four square towers of equal height, the outer facing in ashlar, a barbican viable - fitted frecciere and blackbirds -bounds three yards on that fronts the east, south and west, and finally a ditch flooded by sea water. In the sixteenth century with the advent of firearms, the castle was adapted to the new defensive techniques, while still a strategic defense of the Mediterranean coast during the Empire of Charles V of Habsburg, threatened by the Turkish. There were thickening of the southern front and the construction of two bastions at opposite corners of the south-west (spear) and north-east (to the square. The Castle in the nineteenth century it was used as a central provincial prison, until in 1974. Restored by the Superintendency for the Environmental, Architectural, Artistic and Historical Heritage of Puglia, in 1979, it was opened to the public June 5, 1998. |