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The enclosure of the Fortress protects traces of the settlements that characterized the high ground from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, such as those related to the Acropolis of Roman Lucera or the remains of an early Christian basilica.
In 1223 Frederick II deported a conspicuous Saracen colony to Lucera from Sicily and had a palace built in this place, of which only the truncated base remains. On this base was raised a square tower of three levels, which had an octagonal courtyard inside to anticipate the forms of Castel del Monte. The Palace had no access to the ground floor, so it was probably accessed either by ladders or, more likely, through a basement tunnel. The upper floors were intended for the court, while the lower one for the garrison; the building also housed one of the state’s ticks.
Later Charles I of Anjou built an imposing brick wall surrounding the entire hill. It is the largest European fortification of the time: 900 meters long, 13 meters high and over 1 meter thick and crowned by a walkway.The walls were interspersed with 13 square towers, 2 pentagonal bastions, 7 buttresses and 2 cylindrical angular towers: the simplest, called of the Lion or of the King, is 15 meters high and 8 wide; the other, which has a battlement crowning, It is 25 meters high and 14 meters wide and is called the Lioness or the Queen. The fortified citadel, consisting of a Gothic church and palace no longer existing, was accessed through 4 ogival gates (of Castelfiorentino, Troia, Guardiola and Lucera) and a drawbridge that allowed to cross the moat that separated it from the city.
