To the fall of the Romano Empire, because of the continual barbaric invasions, it in the Italian countries was not more possible live in isolated families kernels, so much was the insecurity that there reigned. Of here the necessity of pick up around to the persons of the abbot or of the gentleman, forming around to them agglomerations of defense, religious or civic.
The medieval castle succeeded instead to unite in oneself, in his more complete form, the residential installation and his defenses.
Beyond that conform to the general distribution above point to, the builders of the castles applied some shrewdness defensive that the edificatory art had sharpened in the time. In the first castles risen among the X and I'XI century, an artless masonry ran around to the perimeter of the elect position for the venue of the castle, position that in the locales of mountain was almost bordered always from a rocky scarp. But the traces of primitive castles in which I/they am preserved the characters of the aboriginal structures are insufficient, that the baron that lived them for many following generations, laying always a big appointment to modernize the halves of defense to the goal of increase the certainty of it.
One of the distinctive characters of this renewal, derived from the new techniques of junction, you learn in east during the first crusades, it was the construction of towers to the vertexes of the walled cage, marking a clear return to the traditions of the architecture military Roman as.
Often, next to the principal cart door, that lasher was held commonly, existed a said second of it pusterla, that the passage consented an only horse for time, she also fortified of drawbridge.
The plain earth was all destined to the men of weapons, the first piano for the house and together destined to the functions of administration and own government of the baron.
Toward the end of the XIV century needed start to do the accounts with the appeared artilleries already apprehensible. The walls had a double thickness of that used for the preceding constructions and they in some cases had fortified of barbicans, external intensifications usually to tilted course.
On the surrounded it had created a series of ample trap doors, you straight double in correspondence of the door of entry. Old the threshold was entered an ample and dark atrium that for a second door, open before that of entry, it put in the courtyard; it had fortified of rolling shutter to custom of obstruction among the atrium and the entry.
The building for the house, in a first time, was corporate only from two or three surrounding of extreme simplicity; in succession, ameliorating the customs of life, this part of the castle became larger, it had strong walls and an own entry with drawbridge.
For the his same character of abode of the families of the baron, the palace, respect to the "mastio", was more open to the extraneous, but note for this his condition, he also was more accessible to the break-in and to the confederacy.
Spetterą to the architects of the revival, to Leonardo, to Francis of George, to Luciano Laurana, the assignment of realize the synthesis among the elements components the medieval castle with the creation of the brave princely mansions of the first Renaissance, in which still so much formal elements of the military housing of the Middle Age, used for their expressive value appear rather than for a real demand of functions.
This passage from the aboriginal function of the castle, of fortitude and of abode, to the second, of abode and of representation, could be frequently pronounced in many buildings, elevated in the Middle Age and afterward adapted, from their tenants, to the new customs of life.
In the feudal age the castle represented the exemplary building of the lay architecture, like the abbey it was for that religious.
Well the castle, as like the abbey, it represented the demand of community defense, a building of the all new, his dialectical by-pass from the Roman castellum not finding any correspondence of form in reality and not even of function; the castellum was, in effects, a small fortitude sited in the zones of bound of the Roman territories, very similar to the castrum, formed from a cage in masonry, usually rectangular, and surrounded from a brook; to the angles castles orient toward the inland.
Only the medieval small fortress, built to the portal of tallest alpine dales, they can maybe remember the castellum, in as for them a certain formal report with the Roman fortifications exists, it is for the existence of leftovers not completely tumbledown of the preceding constructions, it is for the similarity of functions (both the constructions had destined to the refuge of the soldieries of passage and to the vigilance of the confinements).
In the Latin society, businesslike second Roman laws, this necessity of protection was not at all felt. The Roman owner didn't think to strengthen his house of country, sight like calm next to abode to which they were situated all the other necessary buildings to the accommodation of the servants, to the breeding of the livestock and to the refuge of her put.
Also after the flights arouses from the first barbaric invasions, the landed owners left the cities and returned their abodes and only in some finite cases thought to reinforce it for look for a form of protection against the violence of the hooligans.
The people of Germanic origin, but by now adapted in Italy, they had a spirit and a cultural very different heredity instead.
Already Tacito did observe like the Germans could not suffer that their houses are to contact, like in the Latin society, tied a to the other forming an only complex organism, but each must be adapted in a vast space. It for their culture was advised sign of courage and fully legal the action of dispel the neighbors and of prevent that other takes their place.
These customs were preserved also after their installation in our earths and this constituted the first form of guarantee against the sudden junctions. The leaders of the families kernels fixed their distant mansions among them, they occupied vast extensions of territory and their houses were the first kernels of many castles. The villages that were formed around they to them were not still settled from free men, but from colonists tight bonded to the earth.
With the melt of the Roman society, it to her took the place of the feudal regime with the his rigid organization of beginnings and vassals.
Very easily I could assert that the Roman villa served of model for the new construction. We know that she had organized around to a space central left discovered; to the same way the new installations must be corporate from buildings detached among of them, destined to the accommodation of the colonists and to the demands of the work of the fields, in the middle of to which a space existed, covered or discovered, the use to the master for gather the servants, for give get-togethers and for administer justice.
This together bucolic had surrounded from a wall of surrounded and in some cases also easily from a paling; later, when the capabilities of defense wanted to be increased, a wide brook was dug around and the dug earth had brought to the inland of the cage, clamped and it on this raising got organized the central and principal kernel of defense that with the pass of the time it became the mastio.
The wall up of the castle they came erect frequently in zones already of for if same easily defendable, to example the cop of a hill, from which the gentleman dominated for complete the ambient space. In this case then the defensive wall followed the configuration of the earth and the "mastio" came erect or in the more elevated point (for can dominate), or in the weakker point (for strengthen the defense).
Frequently happened that, once erect the surrounded broadside, we perceive that she was not sufficient to contain all how much the resident: for overcome this problem, a surrounded second was built and they in the inclusive space among the two surrounded came situated the lodge of the garrison, the mewses and the stores.
Beginning from the XI century, the mastio came situated beside the more external part than the strengthened cage, it was fitted with own exits on the brook and it came disposed for practice a defense for flanking of the parts less protected than the castle. For the his tall bulk, imminent all the other small births, the "mastio" gave a cachet of impressiveness to the together of the feudal defense and it accentuated the prominence of it.
The towers were tall and leanings from the boundaries of the cage in way from flanking the mediate parts. When the space sufficient era, the wall up of the castles they rose from the vine of the castle, but in the precipitous earths, that didn't consent of widen with the piano of foundation, they got a job to the place of real towers, you of the little towers build on the corners, to the summit of the walls.
The towers of the Roman epoch in their inferior part were floods, but this constructive formality in the XII century came abandoned because it left disposition for the defense the only guardian part of the castle, while the inferior part remained exposed to the assault with picks other or from part of the besiengers.
For eliminate this danger the architects of the Middle Age they depleted the castles in their inland, they divided it for plain and they organized the defense to different levels, opening. The passage from a piano to the other on the sides of the loopholes, in the inland of the tower, had realized for half of very narrow and arduous short step-ladder, a great deal easily to block, you build in masonry and mails in the angles of the tower; these fixed births had connected with segments of staircase in wood that could be removed according to the necessity.
The principal defense of the towers, like also that of the walls up, was but entrusted chiefly to the bullets accumulated on the more elevated and left piano fall from the top.
For realize this intention the parapet of the summit it became stick out and in the gallery to start (bracket) they were anticipated of the openings (trap doors or machicolations) across which the bullets came made throw headlong in adherence to the wall.
The top defensive of the towers and of the walls, beyond that from the trap doors, was corporate from the battlements. These already was in custom beside the Romans, second abiding rules for which each blackbird allowed shelter to an only man; their employment, up to the XI century, didn't suffer any variation practically.
The war experience lived in east during the crusades counseled some modifications to the traditional battlements. For half of a walk of round the battlement came coordinate to the system of the trap doors, the blackbirds became wider and their median part came practiced a clench horizontal opening for the crossbowmans or upright for the archers.
Up to the introduction and to the employment of her arm from fire, the castle represented a sure shelter, to the condition that his defenses are not old with an action of surprise; that scale his boundaries it was not certainly easy, when the vigilance awake era, it is natural that the defensive program of the door of access comes effected in the distinctive minimums.
The entry was situated in a special tower, more strong than the others of the surrounded and well defense from bolts and trap doors, or of two towers. The entry was corporate from a hall closed from strong leaves, wide enough from consent the entry of two flanked horses.
Inserted the custom of the brooks, the drawbridges were used, jockeyed to half of chains you fix to the extremity of two beams (quarrels) to their revolving time and that they went to place oneself, when the bridge had lifted, in two flutes (venues of the quarrels) anticipated of side to the front door of entry, while the scaffolding of the bridge was disposed in front of to the door doubling, with the his same thickness, the certainty.
To the inland, numerous closings, independent among them, they opposed the attacker following obstacles. All the together of the communications had studied in way of bar the enemy that is satisfactory to overcome the entry and that to half of serpentine pulls, of false competence, of blind passages, of trap, of low doors and clenches.
These runs, already of for if as circuitous and difficult, they could still be blocked to half of rolling shutter that, descending from the top, they had the assignment of divide the spaces and contain the hostile break-in.
Repressed from the weight of the defensive worries the life of the baron and of the its families, through the mastio of the castles of the XI and of the XII century, it must unwind unhappy, without convenience and without calm.
The distributive examination of an of these constructions, not altered from the modifications to the architecture of the Renaissance, it arouses surprise and perplexity. Conditions of life as unfortunate, and we will tell almost contrived, they asked a rapid reform toward forms of more civic co-habitation certainly than they have consented to the families of the lord of castle, constrained to conduct their existence among the garrison of the primitive mastio.
Fortunately for the lords of castle their houses suffered an evolution across gradual improvements.
We to the first of these developmental passages meet, around the 1000, the tower with the surrounded, it is worth to tell a shelter and a defense, but not a house or as minus this was comfortless beyond each tell.
The mastio, to quadrate vine, receives in the underground the deposits of provender and of arm; to the plain earth, there are situated the room of arm, that of reunion and of justice and certain it presupposes the continue presence of armed. Men of arm is also disposed on the summit of the tower, of sentinel and of correspondence with the other castles of the territory.
Among the two military zones, the intermediary pianos must be destined to the house, but would be difficulty read an any distributive based system on logical correspondences of functions. Draws aside of spaces approached on horizontal or upright pianos, without worry any of redemption, in which they could be recognized, indifferently, the rooms for the stay or the nocturnal rest.
The second passage, toward the 1200, took care of more the house than the fortitude.
Where the castles became larger to completion of the more ancient, they preserve the tower of the preceding period, even at times if they absorbed cut the summit and demolishing the surrounded that originally enclosed it.
Where they rose new castles these they had the appearance of compact and ample houses, barren of castles, whose certainty had entrusted exclusively to the thickness of the walls with few windows. It treated in definitive of a development of the "mastio" that consented application of the distributive program of the house.
The third period developed around to the first half of the XIV century; the art gave the sign of his flourishing again with the castles you dispose to the angles of the mastio, headwaters from earth, or like told already on the corners.
The given care to the applications of the new military science but it was the cause for which in these castles the domestic arrangement didn't come channel to that degree of perfection to which instead the defenses had arrived at and that the refined already customs required. A surrounded of boundaries surrounded the castle usually; the central body had a space to courtyard in his center, blear in the form, where situated era the staircase that brought to the guardian pianos.
The house had a his fairly logical arrangement but is clear that the defensive worries always were important. The castles, headwaters from earth or to start on the corners, they allowed a perfect action of flanking on all the sides of the perimeter and situated like they were to rider of two rooms, they do retain that in them, in correspondence of the pianos, had arranged an enduring watch for check the passage from one to the other of the places to the goal of conflict the surprise and the betrayal.
We in the fourth period are by now on the foreshortening of the Middle Age the fortitude doesn't put uneasiness the house and has not weakened some.
So much defensive care was well justified: the ancient mastio, extreme defense of the barbaric castle, one was by now as widened that, for give light to his more inside births, one was due dig it to the center.
The courtyard in the half of the fortress has a complete and applicable application here: anchor shut in the thick walls, the castle opens laughing and cheerful toward the space of the courtyard.
The architects of the revival will take back the idea of collect the castles-palaces around to a predestined central space.
The plain earth had occupied for complete from the men of weapons, above the atrium of entry a place destined to the manoeuvre of the rolling shutter and to the men of watch for the machicolations. The house and the rooms of representation were situated to the guardian pianos.
Abiding character of the varied developmental passages that we have examined, the search of a better convenience for the house had been.
This appointment had been but isolated always to the inland of the "mastio" that had been tried to adapt, to the minus bad, to the his double function of defensive organ and of residential building, achieving results sometimes really notables. But next to this continue search of improvement to the inland of the defensive tower, other elements had been gone forming in the time, interpolate to the spaces contained among the surrounded broadsides, destined as to the general services, as for the house.
Because it could not be abdicated to the protection of the "mastio" and that this, for his constructive based conception on considerations of military character, was unsuitable to the mansion, it was thought of build, inside the surrounded strengthened, the house of articulate house from the tower, through which but one was ready to refuge when the danger imposed it.
To the center of the building there often era a courtyard around to which they had collected the places in a system distributive abiding. To the plain earth the body of watch, the "room of justice" with the throne for the lord, the kitchens and the places for the easement; in the cellar the calabooses and the stores; to the guardian pianos the rooms for the house.