Rocca Maggiore


The Rocca Maggiore is a castle which dominated, for more than eight hundred years, the citadel of Assisi and the valley of Tescio, constituting the most viable fortification for their defense.

Description and history

You can reach the fortress on foot through the door Perlici, built in 1316: you can admire the walls in Assisi still intact which, in their long journey, engage the two fortresses, Major and Minor.
The first documented regarding the fortress date back to the 1173, when the German diplomat and Catholic Archbishop Christian of Mainz Frederick Roger.
In 1198 the city passed to the Guelph of Pope Innocent III, and the people, causing extensive damage to the fortress, drove the imperial legate with Frederick, who was only four years. In that year Francis of Assisi was sixteen.
The fortress will be reconstructed, in respect of the medieval, in 1356, the initiative of Cardinal Albornoz, commissioned by Innocent VI by Avignon, to strengthen the fortifications of the Papal.
In 1458, the captain Perugia and Lord of Assisi Jacopo Piccinino leads to the entrance of the round bastion, commissioned in 1535 by Paul III : you come, then, to the large fenced yard, where once there were the rooms of service, and the male, former home of the castle, divided into four rooms accessible by a spiral staircase.
The Rocca Maggiore joins, through the fourteenth century walls, with its fortress Minor, or stronghold or keep of St. Anthony, commissioned by Albornoz in order to consolidate, to the mountain, that part of fortification.

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