Rocca di Gradara (Castello di Gradara)

The Rocca di Gradara stands above the small walled town of Gradara, in the province of Pesaro and Urbino at the northern edge of the Marche region, close to the border with Emilia-Romagna. Its origins date to around 1150, when the De Griffo family raised the central tower, but the fortress as it appears today was largely the work of the Malatesta lords of Rimini and Pesaro, who in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries enclosed it within a powerful double ring of walls that still encircles the borgo. The result is one of the most complete and evocative medieval castles in Italy, with a crenellated keep, drawbridge, inner courtyard and frescoed halls set on a hilltop commanding the surrounding countryside and, on clear days, the Adriatic. Gradara owes much of its fame to literature: tradition places here the doomed love of Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Polenta, the adulterous lovers immortalised by Dante in the fifth canto of the Inferno, and visitors are shown the chamber said to have witnessed their tragedy. Over the centuries the Rocca passed through the hands of the Sforza, Borgia and Della Rovere families before falling into decline, and it was restored in the early twentieth century by the engineer Umberto Zanvettori, who furnished its rooms in a romantic medieval revival style. Today the castle is a state museum, its halls displaying period furniture, arms and a small picture collection, while the walkable walls of the town below offer changing views of the keep. Floodlit after dark and ringed by its intact ramparts, Gradara is among the most photogenic and atmospheric fortresses in central Italy.