Fortifications

  Urban fortifications

The castle usually occupies a pre-eminent and visually outstanding position in the urban settlements. Initially the castles were almost always built in a peripheral location (on the summit of a rocky ridge on which the village developed, as in Roccapipirozzi or Pescolanciano, or at its edge, as in Castropignano, Riccia or Colletorto). Now, due to a continuous process of saturation of available spaces, they are surrounded by houses. In some cases the castle (which after losing its specific military function became a seigniorial mansion and has more recently been divided into separate residential units) stands at the centre of the village; in other cases (when it is located outside the built-up area) it perches on the crest of a hill overlooking the village (as in Roccamandolfi). The surviving towers and iconographic archive documents (e.g. Pacichelli, 1703) bear witness to the fact that a large number of once isolated urban and curtain wall towers were in time incorporated in other buildings, as is made apparent by the planimetrical singularities observable in some urban cadastral maps. Walls and curtain walls suffered considerable mutilations and transformations, often affected by crowding construction phenomena (as in Fornelli, S.Croce di Magliano, Montorio).

Pietrabbondante	Termoli
Campobasso	Santa Croce di Magliano