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The Tower of
Michelangelo
Michelangelo's Tower, Guevara's Tower and Sant'Anna Tower. Three names to identify the same building a few steps from the beautiful Cartaromana beach.
It is one of the most evocative places in Ischia, with an enchanting garden and a breathtaking view that almost seems to make the viewer find himself in front of the Aragonese Castle. Precisely for this reason, in the 19th century, the story spread that links the tower to the presence of Michelangelo Buonarroti in Ischia, to secretly frequent his beloved Vittoria Colonna. In reality it is a story that, having entered the collective imagination, even managed to change the original name of the tower.
Its best known name among the population, before the spread of the legend of Michelangelo, was "Tower of Sant'Anna". It refers to the presence of the rocks of the same name, which have a very important historical value: in fact they host an archaeological park which houses a submerged Roman settlement, presumably linked to ancient Aenaria. The Tower was built in the fifteenth century by a nobleman of the Guevara family. This family had a countship in northern Spain and its members were known as great adventurers (Cervantes in his Don Quixote defines Ferrante Guevara the best example of wandering knight). This surname is nowadays more common in America
In Italy the Guevara came from Spain with the Aragon king Alfonso who conquered Naples (1442) and ordered to fortify all the coasts of his new kingdom. The castle of Ischia had to be protected by two towers (one on its left and this on its right) on the main island.
As it was the habit in that time, the inside walls of the Guevara tower (at least the ones of stairs, first and second floor) were decorated with murals, coats of arms and “grotesques”. Many layers of painting were removed and the original drawings were brought back to light.
Most of the figures on the stairs and the first floor were reproductions of the engravings by Vredeman de Vries (a Flemish artist) while another Flemish (Van Heemskerk) inspired many landscape scenes. The rooms also offer a lovely “picture-postcard” of medieval Ischia and three drawings related to the ancient history of the family.
The two rooms on the first floor were decorated according to the fashion of the time. But in one the drawings were soon covered and replaced with other less valuable. The reason for this strange decision may be this: in the mid-seventeenth century, Prince of Montesarchio married the daughter of Duke Guevara but he participated in a plot to kill the viceroy of Naples, who was a Guevara Earl of Ognate. The plot was discovered and many culprits were hanged, but the prince was saved by the intervention of his friends at the court of Madrid, and then had to go into exile. Before the departure, he ordered to delete all the scenes related to the glory of Guevara adorning the reception room of the first floor. The next room, which had no drawings related to the family, was instead left as it was. The daughter of the Prince married another Duke Guevara and the tower returned to the family.
The Guevara owned this place for five centuries, but left the tower in 1836, when the city council decided to create a cemetery near the tower for the dead of the cholera epidemic. The transport of the corpses on a small rowboat from the village and the castle to bury them under the windows of the Guevara dwelling was a very impressive scene that fascinated a Swiss painter -Arnold Böcklin- who painted the famous “Die Toteninsel” (the island of the Dead). In a dramatic scenario of rocks and cypress trees a white figure stands on a boat which carries a coffin.
One version of this painting was chosen by Adolf Hitler for his office, as we can see in a photograph taken when Ribbentrop and Molotov signed their pact during World War II. After Hitler’s suicide, the painting passed into the hands of another dictator, Stalin, who was also fascinated by this awesome scene. This painting is now missing, but we have four other versions of this scene.
But let's talk about this place, which still has many attractions for visitors. The sea in this bay is the search field for underwater archaeologists, looking for the remains of the first-century port and the villas of the Roman Empire.
These scientists cross their path with other divers: the biologists who study the Global Climate Change of the sea. In a underwater area of a few hundred square meters there is a high concentration of acid smoke-holes that enable scientists to study what will be the level and consequences of sea acidity in 50 or 100 years. This phenomenon exists only in no more than a dozen of other places in the world.
Eventually, the city and the kingdom of Naples were conquered and King Alfonso returned to Ischia, that he loved much, and spent many happy days here with his very young love, Lucrezia di Alagno, that he appointed governor of the island promising her to divorce from his first wife and marry her.
The king also rewarded his followers with many lands and titles. Iñigo Guevara and his half-brother Iñigo d’Avalos (son of the same mother) became very important lords. A grandson of the first Guevara built this tower, were we found (after the restoration sponsored by Circolo Sadoul) same scenes of the family’s history.
One mural shows a battle, that I believe should to be identified with one of the most important steps of Spanish “reconquista”: the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa of 1212 in which the Earl of Oñate (a Guevara’s ancestor) and the king of Navarra defeated the Muslin troops after cutting the iron barriers they had put to protect their camp. The coat of arms of Spanish monarchy (and the Spanish flag) still show the iron chains cut in this battle.
Another drawing shows the departure from Bretagne (France) of the Guevara’s ancestor. This scene was painted to remind that the family claimed to descend from Roland, the count palatine of King Charlemagne whose adventures were counted in one of the most famous cycles of chivalry of the Middle-Ages: “la chanson de Roland”.
I cannot finish my Guevara story without mentioning a hero that lived in this tower. Francesco Guevara was knight of Malta and was in that island during the cruel and famous siege when the Turkish army (around 40,000 people) moved against the Grand Master Jean de la Vallette and his 500 knights. Our Francesco is remembered for having written a letter in which he described what he had seen during the siege (and this is one of the few documents left by a witness of this crucial moment of the European history).