Friedrick II of Swabian: the castle builder. New stereotomic techniques and engineering innovation in gothic construction.

Abstract

This contribute highlights the main architectural aspects and building issues of the Federician architecture, by which we specifically mean all those constructions - most exclusively military and civil - Frederick II of Swabian had built in a very short period, from 1220 to 1250, in order to implement the plan of strengthening military infrastructures in the Kingdom of Sicily. Architecture and engineering under Frederick II comes out from a unique and original mixture of different cultures and experiences coming from all the different Mediterranean regions but coexisting in the southern Italy, from Sicilian Saracens to Nordic Normans, from Cistercian monks to minority groups of Greeks and Byzantines. This study analyses the constituent structure of all Frederick's castles realized by fundaments, that is to say all those castles which successfully express the rational architectonic values typical of the Federician architecture - architectonic-stereotomic stairs included - and tries to encode and understand the processes carried out for realizing projects and constructions from the plan to the realization of the single stony voussoirs.