Description
The Bastione San Giacomo is a five-sided fortress on the edge of Brindisi's old town, built on a natural promontory. It's one of the few surviving pieces of the old walls: restored in 2010, it's owned by the city and hosts exhibitions and conferences.
Its plan is a pentagon, with five faces of different heights that follow the drop between the small eastern hill and the ground outside. It was originally quadrangular, and no one knows when it took its present shape. On the southwest face you can still see the coats of arms of Emperor Charles V and of his military architect Ferdinando Alarcon.
Inside are barrel-vaulted rooms on several levels. The ground floor is level with Via Nazario Sauro; from there a flight of stairs descends 5.50 meters to the basement, which opens onto Via Bastione di San Giacomo.
In the side rooms you can see the natural earthworks and the older defenses on which the bastion was built.
The bastion began in the Swabian era, as part of a project that was never finished: extending the walls to take in the eastern hill. On this side the city remained partly open, defended only by earthworks, natural heights and marshes, where the Romans had once camped.
In the 16th century it was converted for artillery, with parapets, sentry walks, battlements and slanted loopholes to keep an eye on the ground below. It was part of the system of fortifications devised by Alarcon: the bastion was its stronghold to the south, the Castello di Terra to the north.
The new defenses made Brindisi so hard to take that in 1537 the Turks gave up on invading it.
Old views tell its story well. In a bird's-eye view published by Pacichelli in 1703, but depicting the late 15th century, the bastion is already there, and the city appears entirely ringed by walls, even among vegetable plots, gardens and isolated convents.
In another view from the early 18th century, by Mortier, Brindisi appears enclosed by walls even on the eastern side, the one that was never built. On top of that, the print is mistakenly titled "Tarento."
Its plan is a pentagon, with five faces of different heights that follow the drop between the small eastern hill and the ground outside. It was originally quadrangular, and no one knows when it took its present shape. On the southwest face you can still see the coats of arms of Emperor Charles V and of his military architect Ferdinando Alarcon.
Inside are barrel-vaulted rooms on several levels. The ground floor is level with Via Nazario Sauro; from there a flight of stairs descends 5.50 meters to the basement, which opens onto Via Bastione di San Giacomo.
In the side rooms you can see the natural earthworks and the older defenses on which the bastion was built.
The bastion began in the Swabian era, as part of a project that was never finished: extending the walls to take in the eastern hill. On this side the city remained partly open, defended only by earthworks, natural heights and marshes, where the Romans had once camped.
In the 16th century it was converted for artillery, with parapets, sentry walks, battlements and slanted loopholes to keep an eye on the ground below. It was part of the system of fortifications devised by Alarcon: the bastion was its stronghold to the south, the Castello di Terra to the north.
The new defenses made Brindisi so hard to take that in 1537 the Turks gave up on invading it.
Old views tell its story well. In a bird's-eye view published by Pacichelli in 1703, but depicting the late 15th century, the bastion is already there, and the city appears entirely ringed by walls, even among vegetable plots, gardens and isolated convents.
In another view from the early 18th century, by Mortier, Brindisi appears enclosed by walls even on the eastern side, the one that was never built. On top of that, the print is mistakenly titled "Tarento."