The Fortress

The Fortress Architectural Typology

The architectural typology of the fortress of Senigallia provides a typical example of a military fortification defined as a lowland fortress.
These kind of fortifications, in their fifteenth-century shape and function were built only for military purposes and generally to preserve the interests of the local noblesse. Their building did not strictly correspond to the demographic and economic growth of a settlement, but they were usually placed as isolated outposts in the outskirts of the towns, at the vertex of the town wall and they often served also as a residence to the local princes.
Their shape responded to the flat nature of the territory: infact they all had four-side plans with round towers placed at each corner. They represented the Renaissance evolution of the medieval fortification defined as a space enclosed by walls and a tower, usually built to watch over the main downvalley routes or placed by the rivers and shores.
The large courts inside the fortress found an explanation in the double function it played: it served as a residence and at the same time it allowed the quartering and the movement of whole regiments in case of long sieges.
As the practice of fortification evolved during the centuries, in case of the medieval fortress they proceeded by cutting the tops of the towers and of the keeps to lower them to the level of the walls in order to better difend them by the new powerful arms.

The architectural phases

The fortress as it is today, is the result of many fortifying interventions underwent by the building in the course of the centuries as a proof of the great strategic value of the place: between the mouths of the rivers Misa and Penna (today flowing underground).

Although its fifteenth-century configuration is prevalent, four different fortification phases are recognazible in the fortress.

The first dates back to the year 280 B.C. following the Roman foundation of the Sena Gallica, the first adriatic colony, whose remainings are visible on the north-western wall of the court.

The base of the north-western quadrangular medieval tower, belongs to the second phase. It was built with good-facture hewn stones, then it was later incorporated in the fourteenth-century little fortress wanted by the Cardinal Egidio Albornoz and placed in a corner to defend two sections of the town wall (1363-1367, but the building probably remained uncomplete).

Pandolfo III Malattesta conquered the lordship of Senigallia around 1385, instauring the rule of his family over the city. Under the Malatestas (third phase) the fortress of Senigallia acquired a larger structure: in the shape of a quadrangle, with rectangular bastions at each corner, sheer walls with corbels and merlons as recent restoration works have revealed.

The fortress was restored also under the rule of Sigismondo Malatesta, starting in 1450.
The restoration was included in a larger plan of reconstruction and restoration of the whole town. During this intervention they proceeded to the covering of the corner-bulwarks with hewn-stones in order to provide the fortress with an oblique escarp suitable to devert the shots of the more and more powerful fire-arms.
This changement, today visible in the dungeons, was realized on a design by the engineer Giovanni di Sant'Arcangelo di Romagna, summoned by Sigismondo in 1554 to survey the new fortifications.
The work was carried on by M. Antonio da Vercelli and by Braccio da Fano.

At the death of Sigismondo in 1468, Giovanni della Rovere became prince of Senigallia and vicar of the Pope in 1474; in 1475 he became Duke of Sora and prefect of Rome.
Urged by the threat of the Turkish invasions, Giovanni attended to the ameliorations of the city fortification. He turned to the Dalmatian architect for the project of a ditch surrounding the fortress, to be flooded by saltish waters and linked to the mainland through a draw-bridge. The architect died in 1479 before finishing the military restoration of the fortress, but he had probably completed the residential body which the Duke chose as his first residence in town in 1480.

The project was carried on and completed by the Florentine architect Baccio Pontelli who followed Laurana's project, except for the windows opening on to the court, some of the frames and the decoration of the inside halls, the winding staircase of the northern tower, which he designed according to his taste.

Starting from 1480 Pontelli designed and built the new fortress incorporating the old one inside the new walls and the four round, escarped towers (built in the following order: the northern and the eastern facing the sea and the other two turned towards the land).The towers were placed along the same line of the parapets, as the new balistic dictates required, upheld by elegant corbels spaced by machicholations and gun-embrasures.

The interior of the fortress

The fortress, in its central body, had three residential floors served by a two-flight staircase with the entrance on the courtyard. The garrison and the officers were lodged in the lower floor: in 1508 it housed also the School of the bombardiers.

The upper floors were reserved to the Duke. The hall which is today occuppied by the chapel dates back to the period of the Urbino Dukedom's devoltuion to the Church (after 1631).

The dungeons which housed also the gun-embrasures were occupied by the prisons. The great umidity of the place which in winter caused the flooding of the floor, contribuited to harden the sufferences caused by the punishments.
The fortress was equipped to resist to long sieges. It was furnished with underground deposits for the food supply and a granary and a big underground cistern in the shape of a bulb for the gathering of the water. It was placed in the courtyard and covered by a well-curb bearing the arms-of-coat of Giovanni della Rovere.

Fabio Mariano

Regione Marche

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