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San Leo CastleThe Fortress of San Leo was built in the Middle Ages and it was here at the end of the first Millennium, that Germanic rulers gave birth to the Holy Roman Empire. The fortress of San Leo itself was enlarged in the 16th Century by the great Siena military architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini under Duke Federico II da Montefeltro. It was here, in this impregnable castle, that the famous adventurer Giuseppe Balsamo, better known as Count Cagliostro, lived his last days of imprisonment. The facts and legends surrounding the life of this extraordinary alchemist, doctor, magician and freemason are hard to separate. It ended with his sentence to death by the Holy Inquisition for heresy. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment which he served here at San Leo.
But this was to bring him little comfort. He died a long agonizing death, imprisoned first in the castle's so-called Treasury Room and then confined in the 'pozzetto', where he died after four long years, refusing to take the sacrament. The fortress of San Leo is un-doubly the most well-known in the Dukedom; It enjoys a great fame as a military bulwark, unconquerable less for its fortifications than for its extraordinary geographical position.
Infact in the fortress of San Leo the traditional round towers with corbels and machicolations exist together with the elbow-shaped walls which mark the giving up of the round walls experienced in the fortress of Sassocorvaro. The fortress bears the traces of the architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini's first work in the territory of the Montefeltros.
In comparison with other fortresses in the Montefeltro territory, San Leo had a different fortune, because it escaped the demolitions ordered by Guidobaldo during the war against Valentino (1502).
In comparison with other fortresses in the Montefeltro territory, San Leo had a different fortune, because it escaped the demolitions ordered by Guidobaldo during the war against Valentino (1502). A proof of the importance of San Leo resides in the painting by Vasari kept in the Signoria Palace in Florence, picturing the assault to the fortress in 1516, during the brief conflict between the Della Rovere and the Medicis. After that the land passed under the rule of the Church (1631), the fortress tied its fame less to its function of military defense than to that of prison. After the 1789 earthquake and because of the many landslides, Valadier worked on the enforcement of the prison and rebuilt the round northern tower, which had completely sledded. From Gianni Volpe, Rocche e fortificazioni del Ducato di Urbino Courtesy in part of InCastro.marche.it
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