Welcome to the site Napoliforme

The Belvedere or Monteleone Castle, name of the last noble family that lived there, stands on a hill in the Municipality of Marano di Napoli overlooking the Conca di Quarto and then the Campi Flegrei, to then reach the coastal road, and beyond still on the island of Ischia. It was built for the first time by Emperor Frederick II between 1227 and 1230, upon whose death the Castle was probably destroyed. It was rebuilt by the Angevins after 1275 by the same architects, Bausolino de Lynneais and Pietro de Chaule, builders of the Maschio Angioino in Naples. Ferrante della Marra asserted that the Romans had built it “with an underground vaulted path of marble for the three-mile chimney corresponding to the castle of Marano”. The layout is reminiscent of the Roman "castrun" in a quadrilateral shape with courtyard and towers distributed along the external perimeter and the structure, with a rectangular layout, with sides of 37 and 40 meters, develops around a single central courtyard and shows six rectangular towers at the sides; the factory is spread over two floors, the upper one for the lord's accommodation, the lower one for the service areas and is completely made of tuff. Noteworthy are the windows that run along the external perimeter of the castle: in fact, next to clearly modern openings (the castle is currently inhabited), there are single and pointed mullioned windows.