Vittoria’ Theatre. The Cinema Teatro Vittoria was designed in 1921 and in 1937, by engineer Alfredo La Greca, it was rebuilt in a flawless 20th century style, becoming the cultural centre of the city at the time until the night between 6 and 7 April 1986, when it was devastated by a fire that investigations were unable to establish whether arson or not. Since 2000, it has been undergoing restoration and renovation work that was supposed to bring it back to the centre of the city’s cultural events. The work was never completed and in the meantime the building was vandalised. Today, thanks to the synergy and cooperation of the municipal administration and Scena Verticale, it will reopen, after 31 years, for the 18th edition of Primavera dei Teatri. Scena Verticale will provide mobile structures for the provisional reopening, with the administration’s commitment to return it to the city of Castrovillari on a permanent basis.
Via Roma 12, 87012, 87012 – Castrovillari (CS)
Via Principe V, 87012 – Castrovillari (CS)
Piazzale dell’Autostazione snc, 87012 – Castrovillari (CS)
The ‘Sybaris’ Theatre, housed in the former stables of the Franciscan proto-convent, now offers around 300 seats divided into gallery and stalls, and is the centre of the city’s theatrical activities and events.
Contrada Calandrino, 14C, 87012 Castrovillari CS
The Franciscan Protoconvent was founded in 1220 by Pietro Catin, a disciple of the ‘Poverello d’Assisi’. The imposing complex, recently restored, is striking for its two cloisters; it houses the Municipal Art Gallery dedicated to Andrea Alfano, where one can admire the works donated to the hometown by the well-known painter (1879-1967), one of the most authoritative exponents of 20th-century Calabrian artistic culture.
The Protoconvent also houses the Civic Museum, which houses a rich collection of archaeological finds discovered in the area over the last fifty years: fragments of impasto pottery, bronzes, weapons, jewellery, from the Iron Age to the Norman period.
Contrada Calandrino 14C, 87012 – Castrovillari (CS)
Today’s City Hall was a monastery of the Poor Clares from its construction in 1796 until 1906, when it came into the possession of the City Hall, which renovated it in an eclectic style in 1934 to a design by Engineer Alfredo La Greca.
The design of the façade is due to the artist Francesco Paonessa. Next to the building stands the Church of San Frencesco di Paola, inside which a 16th-century painting of the Madonna del Castello and a statue of the Paola saint from the mid-17th century can be seen.
Piazza XXV luglio, 87012 – Castrovillari (CS)
Aragonese Castle. The imposing late-medieval complex at the behest of King Ferdinand of Aragon was renovated in 1490. The castle was conceived, desired and built according to the plans and architectural criteria of the famous military engineer Francesco di Giorgio Martini, who worked at the Court of Aragon, to be a prison that, according to notarial acts and death certificates dating back to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, was one of the most terrible in antiquity.
The dungeons of the fortress are characterised by a series of dark corridors and secret passages with barrel vaults. Its keep, decorated with hanging arches, is known as the ‘Tower of Infamy’, because of the terrible punishments inflicted on brigands taken prisoner and locked up in it. A conservative restoration was carried out on, 18 September 2011. The ‘Torre dell’Infame’, considered the symbol of the city, has more than five hundred years of torture stories and arouses collective fascination every time.
Via Domenico Casalnovo, 4, 87012 – Castrovillari (CS)