New data on the fortifications of the Santo Stefano Castle in Monopoli in Puglia

Puglia, a long strip of land that extends over the eastern Mediterranean, a land of conquest, transit and trade, is identified with a coastal morphological model, still evident in the case study presented here of the Castle of Santo Stefano, located south of the coast town of Monopoli, along the route of the Via Traiana. The castle stands on a small peninsula protected by two natural ports that come out towards the sea from an articulated erosive furrow. In general, these Apulian coastal peninsulas since the Bronze Age were protected by a defensive ‘agger’. The major peninsulas, in the period between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, became fortified coastal cities, unlike those of smaller dimensions, sites of stratified artifacts as in the case of the Castle of Santo Stefano, born on the remains of a Roman villa, later Benedictine abbey dedicated to Saint Stephen the proto martyr. From the fourteenth to the eighteenth century the castle, seat of the Knights of Jerusalem, was affected by different fortification systems, each time designed by virtue of the oldest pre-existing structures; of the indissoluble relationship with the place of the peninsula; protect the building from the degradation of the sea; protect from enemy raids; be seen from afar. In this article we want to present the new data that emerged from the systematic research carried out on the castle of Santo Stefano in relation to the multilayer fortification system. The investigations carried out were of different types: critical findings; archaeological investigations, diagnostic investigations, historical-documentary investigations, investigations on low-altitude aerial images; comparisons with similar artifacts; studies on masonry stratifications; morpho-typological analysis of the walls. The data that emerged from the reading of the relationship between the ‘locus’ of the peninsula and the fortified building compared to other castles, similar in the relationship with the locus, of the Apulian coast, provided a further contribution to the research carried out.