Ruderi del castello longobardo

The Solofra Castle is located on the southern side of the Pergola-San Marco mountain, which borders the Picentini mountains valley to the north.  
The mountain with the important rocky spur of Castelluccia dominated the communication route with the Sabato river valley, which ran through the Granci gorge and was used by both the Samnites and the Romans.   
At that time, there were two towers, according to the plan and photographs. These enabled communications with other defence posts in the basin, Castelluccia and Chiancarola, and the plain of Montoro, and controlled the two access roads to the west and east.  The west tower had a room called "the cave" on the ground floor, which had a barrel vault and a small oval window. The east tower had holes in the floor of the top storey that allowed rainwater to be collected in a large tank at the bottom of the tower.   
The roof had a concrete part known as a "chemin de ronde" or wall-walk, which was accessed from the towers through two hatches, and along the perimeter of the structure there were arrow slits (reaching the height of man's chest) and merlons (three meters high). The central part was covered with wooden shingles and tiles and a space where there were three hatches into the rooms below; in the middle there was a flagpole with levers for manoeuvring the mirrors located on the Castle towers.

Today, much of the northern area of the Castle is preserved, with the keep tower and the north-west tower, both with barrel vaulted cisterns and hydraulic plaster at the base. The residential areas described above still stand, including an interesting part in Gothic style, which connected the first floor of the keep tower with the upper rooms, a part with small ogival cross vaults. There are also several sections of the surrounding walls still standing.

Many parts and some rooms of the Castle remain hidden under the rubble of past collapses or under thick vegetation, which has covered the remaining walls and rooms, sometimes completely, and many of them are at serious risk of collapse.