The bell tower of Gaeta Cathedral is located behind the building, in Pope Gelasius Square, overlooking the Gulf of Gaeta. Built in the Romanesque style with strong Arab-Norman influence, it is 57 meters high, was built beginning in 1148 and was completed in 1279 with the construction of the apex tower.
History
When, between the end of the 8th century and the 9th, the bishopric of Formia was permanently moved to Gaeta, the ancient church of Santa Maria del Parco was elevated to the rank of cathedral and, beginning in 842, housed the relics of the patron St. Erasmus, which until then had been at the Formian cathedral, which was demoted to the rank of a simple church. Beginning with the reign of the hypati John I (867-933) and his son Docibilis II (933-954), the church of Santa Maria del Parco was enlarged, and again after 978, to be finally consecrated on January 22, 1006, by Pope Paschal II. The building had taken on a basilican shape with three naves (of which the left one, the oldest, had an irregular trapezoidal plan) with orientation along the north-south axis (opposite to the present) and the entrance facing the gulf.
In 1148 a piece of land adjacent to the cathedral and facing the ancient forum (today's Piazza Cavallo) was donated by the monk of St. Erasmus in Formia, Pandolfo Palagrosio, to build a bell tower on it, as reported in a document in the Codex diplomaticus cajetanus:
The same year the construction of a large bell tower would begin from the massive basement, for which blocks from the marble facing of the mausoleum of Lucius Sempronius Atratinus were used. The base was conceived hollow on the inside, so that it could form the monumental access to the cathedral behind, a function it fulfilled until the reconstruction following the June 1213 earthquake, as part of which the orientation of the church was reversed.
The architect of the belfry was magister Nicolangelus Romanus, also known as Nicola d'Angelo or more properly as Angelo di Nicola, whose name is recorded in an inscription on the keystone of the ogival arch placed between the two inner bays of the basement. He belonged to a well-known family of Roman marble workers, whose progenitor was Paulus vir Magnus, active in the 13th century in Lazio and also in Rome, where Nicola d'Angelo, with whom Gaeta's Nicolangelus is hypothetically identifiable, collaborated with Pietro Vassalletto in the making of the Easter candle column in the basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.
The construction of the bell tower continued throughout the second half of the 12th century and was completed in 1174; It was not until 1279, with Bartolomeo Maltacea being bishop of Gaeta, that the apex crowning tower was built and completed within the same year, as recorded in a plaque in Latin currently displayed inside the tower and originally placed at the entrance to the tower:
Subsequently, the bell tower did not undergo substantial changes. In the 15th century two Roman sarcophagi and elements of the cathedral's ancient ambon were placed along the side walls of the basement. In 1532-1533 there was already a clock on the eastern facade, in the order immediately below the small tower, probably dating from the beginning of the same century; it was replaced in 1578 by another one by Nicandro Marotta. In 1646 Francesco Marotta made a new clock, with a polychrome tile face designed by Dionisio Lazzari; a second clock was installed by Matteo De Vivo in 1711 on the northern facade, with a marble face by Domenico Antonio Vaccaro. In the 19th century the mechanism of the first one was removed, although its dial remained in place, and later the latter as well.
In the second half of the 20th century the tower underwent major restoration work twice. The first was in the years 1958-1963 under the direction of architect Raffaele Perrotti: in the first phase there were works of static consolidation, with the installation of a widespread chaining system using steel bars and the construction of new internal reinforced concrete floors; the second phase involved the external decorative apparatus, which included the removal of the face of the seventeenth-century clock, and the total reopening of all the mullioned windows, with the liberation of the related columns from support pillars, where present, within which they had been caged. During the restorations in the 1990s, aimed at preserving the original decorative apparatus of the bell tower, the eighteenth-century clock face was also removed (later permanently displayed at the Diocesan and Religious Museum of the Park of the Aurunci Mountains in Gaeta), although the clock with hands and numbers remained initially installed.
In June 2016, the bell tower and the area in front of it were fenced off with a wrought-iron gate. In 2019-2020, a major structural consolidation and restoration work was carried out on the entire tower, also aimed at making it usable and open to visitors, under the direction of Alessandro Catani; during this, among other things, the internal metal stairs connecting the various floors were redone and the surviving elements of the northern clock were removed; the inaugural ceremony was held on August 12, 2020.
Description
Location The bell tower is located at the northeastern corner of the Cathedral of Saints Erasmus and Marcianus and Saint Mary of the Assumption in Gaeta, between the apse (and the underlying crypt) and the last chapel on the right, which is twice as deep as the others. The northern (main) façade faces Pope Gelasius Square and faces the sea, while the western façade faces Cavallo Square, the ancient forum.
Leaning against the apse and to the right of the bell tower is a structure in which two biforas and a neo-Romanesque trifora are located, mistakenly identified as the bell tower of the ancient baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte, actually conceived and originally used as a staircase tower for the 17th-century Baroque choir loft behind, demolished in 1788.
The basement The high basement is in the shape of a parallelepiped and is made largely with material from the mausoleum of Lucius Sempronius Atratinus, a Roman consul who committed suicide in 20 B.C., located in a prominent position over the Borgo of Gaeta. It rises 15 meters above the ground and each of its sides measures 9 meters wide.
The walls of the basement were adorned in the 15th century with frescoes, still present in a poor state in the 19th century, visible in the painting Gaeta S. Erasmo by Giacinto Gigante (c. 1848), in which the upper part of the figure of a saint can be seen on the outer pillar to the right of the ogival archway of the northern facade.
Epigraphs
Among the stone blocks there are some decorated in bas-relief with metopes and triglyphs (particularly on the lower left of the northern façade and on the upper right of the eastern façade) and several inscriptions in Latin. Along the left side there are two: the first, on the lower left, reads:
This epigraph gave rise to some fanciful suppositions, including that, according to the ninth book of the Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidius Naso, which tells of the god Mercury divining through the barking of Anubis, the basement had originated in pagan times as a temple dedicated to the deity.
Higher up, on an axis with this one, is another inscription, more extensive and placed upside down. The text extends over four lines and is incomplete at both ends; it is of a funerary nature and refers to two soldiers, Gaius Furius Aemilius Gallus, son of Gaius, and Gaius Furius Aemilius, son of Gaius and grandson of Marcus:
On the same side, in the upper part of the left quadrant, there are two other epigraphs; the one placed lower down, three rows above the previous one, refers to Lucius Munatius Plancus, who had a villa in Gaeta and who, upon his death (1 A.D.), was buried in the mausoleum erected in 22 B.C. on the summit of Mount Orlando:
Just above it, there is another short inscription that refers to the Gens Ummidia:
By contrast, the marble memorial stone located at the corner between the northern and eastern sides of the basement, with the epigraph facing north, is complete. The artifact, in the shape of an altar, comes from the land surrounding the turris Garilliani, built by Gaeta's hypatos John I on the left bank of the Garigliano River immediately after the victorious battle of 915 against the Saracens stationed there, which earned him the title imperialis patricius, found in the inscription. When, in the mid-12th century, various stone materials were collected for the construction of Gaeta's bell tower also in the area of Formia and Minturno, the memorial stone was also transported to Gaeta and used as a cornerstone, although the tower at the Garigliano was still in operation.
The text is as follows:
Another epigraph, of a funerary nature and also referring to the Gens Ummidia, is found on a stone set in the pavement at the foot of the basement steps:
Northern elevation
The northern side of the bell tower's basement is characterized by the presence of a large pointed arch, which gives access to the staircase inside the basement; it rests on two pairs of smooth reclaimed columns made of Egyptian black granite (the outer one with a base reused as a capital and the inner one with a Corinthian marble capital), interspersed with a half-pillar. The shutter is located above the cornice that spans about two-thirds of the height of the base. The archivolt consists of a carved double-notched molding, at the base of which are placed two protruding marble corbels carved in bas-relief with leaves and rosettes. The archway in its form is of Islamic derivation and bears a strong analogy to the main archway of access to the prayer hall of the great mosque of Qayrawan, Tunisia, which is also ogival and supported by two pairs of columns.
In the two corners of the upper part of the basement, parallel to the two side facades and projecting northward, are two marble statues depicting as many reclining lions.
Due to the monumentality of the basement and a widespread misunderstanding of the inscription on the memorial stone of John I, the latter was long considered an independent monument from the cathedral, built at the behest of the hypatos after the victory of 915. Therefore, the structure would have originated as a celebratory monument (specifically a triumphal arch) that only later, in the 13th century, would have been repurposed as a bell tower with the construction of the brick tower above and connected to the church behind.
Interior and staircase
Internally, the basement is divided into a single, deep room that consists of two bays and is entirely occupied by the staircase leading to the cathedral. The latter was probably originally less long than the present one, and stood after the seventeenth step from the bottom, where a narrow landing is currently located; only later, with the construction of the large semicircular apse that closes the room constituting its second bay, would it acquire its present extension.
The first bay has a rectangular plan, covered with a cross vault without ribs. In the upper part of the right wall, above the cornice, there is an ogival single lancet window that gives light to the staircase behind for access to the second floor of the bell tower. This one, about 50 centimeters wide, is carved directly inside the stone blocks that make up the base of the bell tower and is interrupted in the middle by a cross-vaulted landing, while that of the ramps is barrel vaulted; the ceiling is decorated with some bas-reliefs, such as a crescent moon and rosettes.