The Castle of Della Monica stands on San Venanzio hill and overlooks the central Garibaldi square, a crucial joint of the modern town. It is located into a small village in neo-Gothic style and looks like a true and well-maintained medieval building even though it is not. The name is that of his creator, builder and owner, Gennaro Della Monica, local painter with Napolitean origins. He was born in 1836 and died in 1917. A true child of art, his father Pasquale, was an excellent painter and a master in the art of drawing. Gennaro showed his artistic skills since childhood and although he was at first opposed by his father, succeeded in expressing his qualities while attending the Academy of Arts in Naples; he became a good, and active painter, fully inserted in the modern and revolutionary group of the so-called School of Resina.
Gennaro Della Monica, after travelling and working in various places in Italy and abroad, finally settled in Teramo in 1867 and like his father, became a teacher in the local School of Art. He was an active and sometimes talked about public character and worked regularly for private, public, civil and religious clients. In spite of this, he never forgot the natural beauties surrounding him that inspired many of his paintings.
In 1889 he started working on the project and realization of the Castle, a complex building that he probably decided to create after a short visit to Turin where he had been invited to take part in the Universal Exposition of 1884. There he could appreciate the fortress and the mediaeval village in neo-Gothic style of Parco San Valentino and used as exposition spaces.
Della Monica Castle is the heart of the artist’s project; here, he expressed all his passion for Art, his creativity and fantasy.
He conceived both structural and decorative solutions and details, indoor and outdoor, from paintings on walls to the project of the garden as well as the inclusion of archeological findings and authentic fragments.
It is worth noting that he was a member of the Mason Lodge “Melchiorre Delfico” and the Castle is the expression of the idea of man as builder of himself and of his spiritual “Temple”.
The financial commitment for the realization of the castle was so important that the artist had to ask contributions to cultural exponents, patrons and supporters. The time the castle required for its building was long, Gennaro Della Monica died in 1917, he had been living into the castle for ages and the works were still going on.
The legend tells that the artist, married with children, had fallen in love with a gipsy woman and this tormented love was linked to a prophecy that said he would have died after the completion of the works.
This would explain the endless expansions often without a common thread in the project and the total lack in symmetry of the castle.
Traduzione: classe 3ALL del Liceo linguistico statale Giannina Milli
