Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

Frederick II Hohenstaufen. The Hohenstaufen were very enthusiastic castle builders—and needed to be, because their chief dynastic trait was fighting other rulers, particularly popes. However, their most impressive surviving castle lies not in Germany but in southern Italy, where Frederick erected the stunning fortress-cum-hunting-lodge Castel del Monte on a hill above Andria, in Apulia. With its eight-sided walls, each joined by an eight-sided tower, Castel del Monte spoke in part to Frederick’s political and military aims, but more, perhaps, to his fascination with geometry and mathematics, and his keen interest in Islam. In its footprint, Castel del Monte resembles nothing quite so much as the first level of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (see chapter 4), the city that Frederick returned to Christian control during his crusade of 1228–29. Edward I was not the only thirteenth-century king to import design ideas from the eastern Mediterranean.