Stop 07 of 9
Gran Castello Historic House
Ordinary life in the citadel
Narration · 3 min
Have it read to you while you look at the thing itself, hands in pockets.
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Guide to Gran Castello Historic House
A group of medieval houses inside the walls, some with fifteenth-century Sicilian Gothic windows, run together as a museum of Gozitan working life. Every other site on this walk is about power, defence or religion; this one is about how people got through the week.
Deliberately unglamorous
Inside are the tools of the farmer, the stonemason, the cobbler and the baker, along with a hand mill, looms, and the equipment for making the peppered cheeselets sold in the market down the hill.
Until living memory Gozo was a subsistence island where nearly everything was made by hand within a few kilometres of where it was used, and this is the evidence.
Look at the buildings too
The window openings with slender columns are the same Sicilian Gothic detail found at Palazzo Falson in Mdina, and they say something specific: in the fifteenth century Gozo belonged culturally to Sicily far more than to anywhere else.
Note the dimensions as well: cramped rooms, walls out of all proportion to them. These are dwellings built inside a fortress, for households that expected to be shut in behind its gates.
What to look at
- Fifteenth-century Sicilian Gothic windows in the house fronts
- The hand mill and the cheese-making equipment
- Room sizes: a whole family in a space the size of a modern kitchen
Practical
- Museum
- Gran Castello Historic House, open daily. Included in the combined Citadella ticket.
Walk to stop 08
Take the steps up onto the wall from beside the houses, and walk out along the ramparts to the northern corner.
About 3 min · 150 m