Della Monica Castle

The medieval village of Teramo is a complex of nineteenth-century buildings built in the homonymous municipality, on the hill of San Venanzio, through o fusion in a single structure of different architectural and artistic styles (from negotic to moorish, with various deriving contaminations resulting from numerous training experiencies matured over time by its author). The main building of the village is Della Monica Castle, whose name also extends to the other buildings and surrounding green areas. [1] Wanted and designed by the Teramo artist Gennaro Della Monica, from whom it took its name, it was started in 1889, after the provincial deputation issued the permit "to be able to build a residential casino, parallel to the road to Bosco Martese". In 1890 the walls of the central body had already been erected and the roof covered.[2]

Della Monica Castle
The main building
General information
Status	Process of restoration
Architectural style	Negotic - Moorish
Location	Abruzzo
Address	Via del Castello Viale Camillo Benso Cavour
Town or city	Teramo
Country	ITA
Year(s) built	1889 – 1917
Client	Gennaro Della Monica
Owner	Comune di Teramo

The main building, which constitutes the actual castle, was erected on the site of the ancient chruch of San Venanzio, reduced by the french and powder keg, of which the costruction materials and decorative elements were reused.

Della Monica Castle is linked to the neo-gothic taste, in vogue at that time, as can also be said from the castle that belonged to the writer Vincenzo Bonifaci, built at Vallenquina, in the municipality of Valle Castellana, in the early twentieth century, by some attributed to Gennaro Della Monica himself. Clarifies though Cosimo Savastano, reporting the text of a note found among the painter's papers, which "that is not an example of the gothic revival properly said, but it is, for many aspects representative of the figurative-litteraly culture and sensitivity of the 18th and 19th centuries: the complex takes its cue from the eighteenth-century taste for the picturesque,fed on the romantic ideology stimuleted by the rediscovery of the castle [...] (and the Middle Ages)[...] all in shapes and decorations drawn with great freedom and inventivenes from the gothic repertoire with moorish contaminations."[3]

Probably the project had been born in the mind of Della Monica for some years, at least since time of is trip to Turin, on the occasion of the exhbition of 1884 (in which he had exhibited two of his paintings), when he was admired by the view of the suggestive medieval village built in the Valentino park.

Gennaro Della Monica lived in the castle and placed his studio there, where he collected a huge amount of studies, notes and drawings made during the completion of the interiors and the entire complex. In the following years, in fact, two other secondary buildings were completed which, together with the main body, form a real village in medieval style: in addition to the main building (west wing) and two buildings downstream (east wing), the village includes a service dependency (south wing) and pretty terrace gardens.

In September 1900, during the festivities for the inauguration and reopening to worship of the church of the Madonna delle Grazie in Teramo, the stoker Pietro Paolo Vallone conceived an extraordinary show of pyrotechnic illusionism that had as its theme the fire of the Castle's Monica.

After the death of Della Monica, which took place in 1917, Vincenzo Bindi, an art historian born in Giulianova, was the first to propose its acquisition by the Municipality to allocate it to the seat of the civic museum.[4] The proposal, however, criticized by many parties, was immediately shelved.[5]

Located in an isolated position between the green of the hill of San Venanzio, in the west of Teramo, the castle became a characteristic element of the Aprutino landscape, just as to the east of the city it was for the astronomical observatory that Vincenzo Cerulli, at the end of the nineteenth century, had built on the hill of Collurania. Due to an uncontrolled building proliferation, however, starting from the second post-war period the castle was gradually more and more surrounded and suffocated by houses and condominiums that ended up completely hiding its profile until it became almost indistinguishable from sight and mortified any landscape value.

With the exception of a single building, used as a civil dwelling, the rest of the complex is owned by the Municipality of Teramo and is being restored to be reopened to the public and returned to the city. On 15 December 2013 the new lighting of the east facade of the castle was activated.