Estense Castle

The Estense Castle, or castle of San Michele, is the most representative monument of the city of Ferrara.

The Estense Castle was built in 1385 as a fortress for political and military control and for the defense of the Este family, therefore also thought of as a repressive tool.

The first stone was symbolically laid on September 29, the day of St. Michael, the warrior archangel at the head of the celestial militias as well as the traditionally fixed date for removals.

In 1860 Ferrara was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy. The castle, which became state property, was purchased for 70,000 lire in 1874 by the provincial administration of Ferrara which began to use the spaces as the seat of its offices and the prefecture. Over the years the structural efficiency of the monument has been safeguarded thanks to continuous maintenance works, which have been accompanied, at various times, by specific restoration works.

Many interventions were made in the period between 1910 and 1930, some very questionable such as those aimed at creating full accessibility of the castle courtyard to cars. During the Second World War the northern ravelin was demolished by bombing, and then faithfully rebuilt by the Civil Engineers in 1946.

In 1999, on the initiative of the President of the Province of Ferrara Pier Giorgio Dall'Acqua, the project The Castle for the City was started. Thanks to the collaboration between the Prefecture and the Province of Ferrara, people began to think about a new use of the rooms which had been the seat of the government until then.

The preparatory phase of the works started with the restoration of the palace of Giulio d'Este, which later became the new seat of the prefecture, and in 2002, when the transfer was completed, the restoration of the castle began and its simultaneous use for new initiatives. Two initiatives that were highly successful should be remembered:

The exhibition The Triumph of Bacchus inaugurated in 2002 by the President of the Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
The Gli Este exhibition in Ferrara was inaugurated on 14 March 2004 by the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi.

In 2006, with the opening of Alfonso D'Este's alabaster dressing rooms, the restoration of the Estense Castle was completed, which returned to the people of Ferrara the rooms present in the most important city monument that had always been inaccessible to the public.

In 2006, the new museum exhibition prepared by Gae Aulenti was inaugurated and, again in the same year, following an agreement between the Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg and the Province of Ferrara, the Ermitage Italia project was born which, until 2013, it had its representative office in the castle, before being transferred to Venice.

On May 20, 2012, a strong earthquake - 5.9 Richter degree - (followed by a second quake on May 29) caused considerable damage to many parts of the structure, in particular the Leoni turret, which suffered a small collapse.