The castle of Valsinni in the province of Matera, where the poetess Isabella di Morra lived and where the legend of which she is the protagonist was born, is thought to have been built on a pre-existing Longobard fortification in the early years after 1000.
In his book “Isabella Morra and Diego Sandoval de Castro”, historian Benedetto Croce cites the origins of the manor, tracing them back to a Roman castrum placed for the defense of the last lock on the Sinni river, which from that point opens towards the Ionian Sea. The castle owes its historical value and notoriety to the poetess who was born there around 1520 and was killed by her brothers at the age of around 26 when they discovered her alleged relationship with Diego Sandoval de Castro, baron of Bollita. The castle with the fiefdom of Favale (modern Valsinni) had come to the Morra family at the beginning of the 16th century through noblewoman Menocca Vivacqua and was possessed, with alternating fortunes, for about 140 years, until 1638. Since 1921, the castle has been owned by the Rinaldi family.
The Legend
The castle is also famous for the story of the poetess Isabella Morra. Isabella was a noble poetess who lived and died in the castle. The story goes that three of her brothers, Decio, Fabio, and Cesare, decided to eliminate their sister. This was because they suspected that Isabella regularly sent poems to the noble Diego Sandoval de Castro, lord of the nearby fiefdom of Bollita. Sandoval was also the governor of rival Taranto. Sandoval was married with children and it was not tolerable that a girl, even if educated and of high rank, could have a relationship, even just through letters, with a stranger who was a father of a family and, moreover, Spanish.
The Morras were pro-French and certainly could not tolerate such a relationship, this, in fact, was considered an affront to their honor. Naively, Isabella continued her epistolary relationship without thinking of the sad fate that awaited her. Thus, she was barbarically killed by her greedy brothers in the name of state reason and honor, who, without any humanity, appropriated and divided her dowry. According to legend, her sad spirit still wanders among the walls of the Castle of Valsinni and would be enveloped in a wide white cloak, with her magnificent blond hair, in eternal search of justice.
Unfortunately, to this day, there is no information as to where she was really buried. The same Benedetto Croce cited Isabella Morra, whose lyric and extreme femininity of verse he admired, which he defines as “passionate and very personal”.