Another UNESCO site — magnificent, haunting and mighty in its ruin
On of our travel goals is to see as many UNESCO sites as possible. Why? Simply because they are a guaranteed unique and magnificent experience — whether Angkor Watt in Cambodia, or Glendalough, Ireland, these sites are all so different, and all a tribute to Humankind’s driven to create and conquer nature; magical, mysterious, full of the stuff of legends.
This time it was the very-hard-to-find Castel Del Monte in the Grand Sasso mountains, in the Italian region of Abruzzo.
While it is easier to come from the east and pass through L’Acquila, with an easy drive up the mountain, we took the far more difficult yet almost magical path through the mountains. We maneuvered tiny roads the GPS could not find, through villages where you wondered how they survived. The road climbed and climbed, got narrower and narrower, until we reached the base of the ruins of one of Europe’s most intact castles, Castel Del Monte, and the amazing, octagon-shaped Church of the Madonna perched on the precipice, from which you can see the massive valley and the small mountain towns in the distance.
The climb is harrowing, goat-friendly to put it mildly, but you could also see the military strategy involved. Not only is the castle imposing and incredibly preserved. The bulwarks of this famous castle overlook a huge, sprawling valley — easy to see approaching armies.
The sun, as often is in this region, blazed and the sky was a like a light lake-water blue, cloudless and yet the wind blew hard and steady.
As you stand, wind whipping your hair, conversations lost in the air, you can almost go back to that time of royalty, province fought for — lost and won. You can see how the castle would strike fear, the views that create a deep sense of awe, the place of kings and queens to have their visitors and supplicants…we were really speechless the entire time we walked around.
As a side note, the Castel Del Monte, may be known to you because it has appeared in several movies, and although driving to the top of the mountain on which it perched, overlooking a massive valley for approaching enemies, it is worth it. While it all seems so ancient, and somewhat barbaric, it also is not foreign to us — we still build for drama, fight for goals real and imagined — our basic selves have not evolved very much from such ancient times.
Nearby, and a only a few centuries old, was an oddly shaped, padlocked, well-kept Church of the Madonna. It was a quarter-mile from the castle and perched alone along the edge of the mountain top.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castel_del_Monte,_Apulia
Outspoken Traveler 
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