The mutable face of the defensive asset

the fortified system of Reggio in the 15th century, from the localistic fragmentation to the institutional reorganisation

Abstract

This study deals with the complex of architectural transformations that involved the castle of Reggio and the city walls starting from 1439, when it fell into Aragonese hands, up to the more famous modernization works that affected the fortress between the end of the 1480s and 1490s. Apart from raising the possibility of the earliest changes probably occurring in the last period of its enfeoffment to the de Cardona family, the paper is aimed at evaluating whether the modifications of this large architectural complex, as well as mere constructive transformations or renewals with respect to revised military techniques, were the expression of a novel defensive system, whereby the castle, in the frame of the surrounding urban towers, became the fulcrum of a military action capable of over-coming the polycentrism and fragmentation of the defense previously entrusted to the surrounding hillforts, known as motte-and-baileys, often harbingers of subversive and pro-Anjou forces.