Castel Sant’Elmo a Napoli

The project was carried out by the Spanish military architect Pedro Luis Escrivà. The first castellan of Sant’Elmo was Don Pedro de Toledo, cousin of the viceroy, who died in 1558, whose funerary monument is preserved in the sacristy of the church, located on the Castle’s Parade Ground. The castle was often used in the following centuries as a prison; it held Tommaso Campanella, accused of heresy, and later the patriots of the Neapolitan revolution of 1799 such as Gennaro Serra, Mario Pagano, and Luigia Sanfelice.

After being a Bourbon outpost, it was a military prison until 1952. Subsequently, the fortress passed to the Military State Property until 1976, the year in which a major restoration intervention began by the Provveditorato alle Opere Pubbliche della Campania. The work made it possible to recover the original structure, revealing the ancient routes, the patrol walkways, and the underground rooms, where a large Auditorium was created. In 1982 the monumental complex was entrusted to the Superintendence for Artistic and Historical Heritage of Naples. Today the castle houses the offices of the Directorate of the Campania Museum Hub and the Museum of the Twentieth Century in Naples.

The Castle has hosted numerous exhibitions of ancient and contemporary art over the last thirty years but also intense activities including music, cinema, and theater festivals. What makes this monumental site unique are the ramparts, from which one can admire a spectacular panorama of the entire surrounding territory, from the islands to Vesuvius, from the Phlegraean Fields to the Matese mountains.