Medieval mystery

Medieval castles are generally dark and forbidding places that look as if they were built to prove the proposition that ‘form follows function’: the function was to be impregnable, and their high walls, crenelated and machicolated battlements, and slits for firing arrows instead of windows suggest that everything was subordinated to that dour defensive purpose. Castles are gloomy, intimidating buildings that sink the spirits. They were meant to intimidate and depress the population, and they succeeded. They still do.

But we may have the wrong idea about castles. Recent research suggests that, in Italy at least, far from being solidly monochrome blocks, they may have been a riot of colour. The town of Vignola, south west of Bologna, has an impressive castle that was rebuilt in the early 15th century. From a distance, it conforms to type: sheer walls unrelieved by windows; dark, looming towers; and an outline that sends the message ‘abandon hope, all who enter here’.

Get closer, however, and you see remains of brightly coloured fresco painted on the outside walls. ‘Originally, the whole of the castle would have been covered in fresco paintings,’ explains Bruno Zanardi, a professor of art restoration and history of art at the University of Urbino. Prof. Zanardi has just finished restoring some of the remains, both inside the castle and on its outside walls.

You have to look hard to locate the fragments that have survived nearly 600 years of being deluged by rain and burnt by the sun, but the splashes of faded colour can be found, usually high up. And to see them is a shock. What, you ask yourself, are reds, greens, yellows and blues doing on the walls of a castle?

‘They decorated it all,’ says Prof.