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The Spanish Walls

The construction of the imposing walls and of the two adjacent bastions was ordered in April 1529 by the viceroy of the Kingdom of Sicily, Ettore Pignatelli, who planned the works down to the last detail. The building of the round bastion of S. Maria was entrusted to the master builder Simone Messina, who was also required to raise half of the long wall using 9 skilled workers and 22 labourers. The master builder Carlo Florio, with the same number of workers, was to build the other half of the wall and the imposing bastion of the islands.  

All building works, including the parts of the wall that led from the two bastions to the foundry and to the church of the Annunziata, were planned by the military engineer Pietro Antonio Tomasello from Padova, who had been in the service of Emperor Charles V since 1523.

 

Wall erected in the 16th century in a photo taken from the upper part of the Bastion of S. Maria. In the background, the Bastion of the Islands, with the Ravelin of S. Giovanni, built in the seventeenth century, in the centre.

A document from the 12th of  October 1529 reports that works had begun, slowly but surely, with excavations for the foundations for the two bastions having been completed, but without the foundations in place there was a very real risk that the ditches could fill with water. On the other hand the construction of the foundations of a portion of the wall between the two bastions had begun. By February 1532, a third of the wall had been completed (80 of the 240 metres).

Alongside the men working under the master builders Messina and Florio, a further 24 labourers were employed for the construction of the foundations. 4 master engravers were also brought in to sculpt the decorations in stone including the robust stone cord around the lower part of each of the 55 oblique ducts (“murder-holes”) used to bombard the enemy with stones that shot out through the bottom.

Work was completed in around 1537. A century later, two advanced fortifications (“ravelins”) were built to reinforce the defence of the wall that was already protected by a dry ditch (with a drawbridge) and by the cannons of the two adjacent bastions.

 

 

 

 

The 16th century walled curtain in a photo taken in around 1925 from the upper part of the Bastion of the Islands (from the archives of Dott. G. Bucca).

 

 

 

The wall and the bastions of S. Maria and of the Islands in a drawing by the military engineer Tiburzio Spannocchi (1578)

 

 

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