The existence of the Castle dates back to the year 887. Emperor Charles II, the Bald, stopped there when Pope John VIII invited him to come down to Italy to free it from the Saracen hordes.
The Norman Era and the First Feudatories
More certain news can be found in the Monastic Chronology of St. Bartholomew, where it is read that in 1061 Ugo Malmozetto, service captain of the Norman Robert I of Loritello, nephew of Robert Guiscard, after occupying the county of Penne, built the Castle of Loreto for the county which his brother Dragone was invested with, and which was very important because it included eighteen baronies between the Tronto and Pescara.
This Dragone or Norman Tassone, also granted assets to the Church, with an act of 1066 kept in the aforementioned Abbey: it was still under the terror of the prediction of the end of the world, which advised the feudatories to acquire a distinguished place in the other world with pious works.
The Benedictines and the Last Judgment
It can be said that all the history of the feudality of those dark years passed through the Castle of Loreto. The ancient deeds faithfully record all the Counts who succeeded the son of that Dragone named Giovanni, to that Berardo II, who around his court gathered over five hundred Benedictine monks largely dedicated to studies and the arts.
Surely in that era one of those Benedictines frescoed, on the back wall of the church of Santa Maria in Piano in Loreto Aprutino, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise according to the vision had in a dream by his confrere Alberico.
This fresco constitutes the first Last Judgment in painting, prior to Giotto, and is a work of truly great interest.
The D'Aquinos and the Miracle of the Roses
The history of the Kingdom of Naples intertwines with that of the Castle of Loreto Aprutino with names of famous feudatories for their deeds in these lands. Thus the D'Aquinos, whose first Count of Loreto was Rodolfo or Landolfo, father of that Saint Thomas who, as a youth, was a guest of the Castle where he also performed his first miracle.
In fact, according to various testimonies, little Thomas, who used to fill his small apron with food to secretly distribute to the poor of the town, was caught one day by his father and a servant on the drawbridge as he was about to leave the Castle, and, asked to show what he had in his little apron, the child replied "only roses for the poor".
And indeed many little roses fell from the small apron when the servant opened it. The miracle is remembered in a very ancient painting in the saint's votive chapel in the parish church.
The French Siege and the End of the Feudal Era
After the D'Aquinos came the D'Avalos, a family also rich in prominent men, such as was certainly Ferrante Francesco, also lord of Scanno, who was viceroy of Sicily and husband of the famous Vittoria Colonna, who later fell heroically in the Battle of Pavia on February 24, 1525. And then again the D'Afflitto and the Caracciolo who in 1781 dismantled the upper part of the Castle using the recovered material to reinforce the foundations.
With the Napoleonic regime, the feudal period also closed for the Castle of Loreto Aprutino, which was occupied by French soldiers commanded by Captain Sermetre, who had the building surrounded by double walls and the parts knocked down in 1799 repaired from the cannon used to quell the resistance of the Loretans.
Captain Sermetre used to look out a window after lunch to sunbathe facing the subdued but hostile town. Michele Ferrante, a skilled Loretan marksman, took advantage of this and shot him dead from the road below the boundary wall, and then, gathering an armed band in the countryside, launched an assault on the Castle in which not a single French garrison member survived.
The Restoration and the Castle Today
This is the last violent episode witnessed by the Castle: it remained abandoned for some years, suffering the ravages of time and the looting of the locals until, put up for sale in Naples, it was purchased by the Gentleman Giacomo Chiola who bravely restored the massive building creating a beautiful park on the sides of the hill on which it stands.
The Castle Chapel was also then endowed with a wooden statue, by an unknown Spanish sculptor, depicting Our Lady of Sorrows: every Good Friday, the effigy left its home to take part in the famous procession which, as is customary in the towns of Abruzzo, takes on the characteristics of a sacred representation.
Since 1996 the Castle has become an accommodation facility, with 26 rooms, a beautiful swimming pool, a banquet hall, and an "à la carte" gourmet restaurant, keeping its ancient silhouette intact, with two rectangular bastions on the sides of the facade, the rounded keep with a wall more than four meters thick and the moat now covered and adapted into an avenue.
