Vincigliata Castle (Italian: Castello di Vincigliata) is a medieval castle which stands on a rocky hill to the east of Fiesole in the Italian region of Tuscany. In the mid-nineteenth century the building, which had fallen into a ruinous state, was acquired by the Englishman John Temple-Leader and entirely reconstructed in the feudal style.
From 1941 to 1943 it served as a small prisoner-of-war camp known as Castello di Vincigliata Campo P.G. 12. It housed some high-ranking British and Commonwealth officers, including Major-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, who was employed by the Italian government in the Armistice negotiations with the Allies in 1943.
Original castle
The 13th-century castle, located on a hill north of Florence close to Fiesole, is medieval in origin. It was once the ancient stronghold of the Visdomini family, important Florentine nobility since the 11th century. They enjoyed special privileges from the Florentine bishops. A son of the family John Gualbert, a Benedictine monk, was canonized in 1193 by Pope Celestine III. The property then passed to the Usimbardi family, (which introduced glass production to Florence) followed by the Ceffini of Figline.
They soon sold it to the Buonaccorsi banking family. In the general crash of Florentine banks in 1345 (bad debts by King Edward III of England for his Battle of Crécy and Battle of Poitiers (1356) campaigns) it was purchased by Niccolo, son of Ugo degli Albizi, a wealthy mercantile family. A branch of this family, for reasons of political expediency renamed Alessandri, occupied the castle for some three hundred years.
After the fall of the Republic, the Alessandri family still kept up their palace in the city, but the castle was allowed to drift into decay, till by the year 1637 only the Lord Francesco lived there with a 10-year-old son, Giovani Antonio, and a maiden aunt of 70. The ruins and land were sold in 1827 to Lorenzo di Bartolommeo Galli da Rovezzano They became a source of interest to writers and artists during the romantic era, as evidenced by an Emilio Burci sketch dated 1836.
John Temple-Leader
John Temple-Leader, as a young Whig politician, suddenly abandoned a parliamentary career for the continent. In the early 1840s after several years in Cannes, he moved to Florence, taking a house in the Piazza Pitti. He became a friend of Georgio Barbera, a Florentine publisher and supporter of the unification of Italy. Later he purchased Fiesole's Villa di Maiano and joined Tuscany's sizeable English expatriate community. Whilst exploring the hills of Fiesole, the Englishman came upon the overgrown ruin of Castello di Vincigliata. He fell in love with it and decided to restore it to its former glory.
Over 15 years, the castle was reconstructed in the neo-Gothic style from the ground up. With the help of a young architect, Giuseppe Fancelli, it became a romantic vision of a feudal fortress. He also bought the surrounding land, more than seven hundred acres in the space of fifty years, began the delicate task of reclaiming it and restoring the houses and villas. He created the Bosco di Vincigliata, planting cypresses in the rocky areas where nothing else would grow, with pines and all the various shrubs and bushes one finds in a typical central Italian woodland; in short, an English romantic garden on a huge scale. People flocked from afar to visit his castle and admire the grounds, and he was extremely pleased when The Illustrated London News printed an engraving of Queen Victoria doing a watercolour of the Giardino delle Colonne, a pretty pool fed by the Mensola creek, during her visit in 1893.
Henry James wrote of the castle: "This elaborate piece of imitation has no superficial use; but, even if it were less complete, less successful, less brilliant, I should feel a reflective kindness for it. So handsome a piece of work is its own justification; it belongs to the heroics of culture."
The gate of the castello is flanked by two stone lions and leads into an Italian garden with a fountain and a sunken cloister. Originally there were many Gaetano Bianchi (1819–1892) frescoes of scenes from the lives of the various families that owned Vincigliata, but only one has survived, Ugolino de'Visdomini invoking the Virgin before marching against the Sienese. In 1889 he published the definitive record on Sir John Hawkwood, an English mercenary (or condottiero) active in 14th-century Italy. Sir John married late in life and died in Florence in 1903, without heirs. He left all his properties, including the Castello di Vincigliata to his great nephew Richard Luttrell Pilkington Bethell, 3rd Baron Westbury, who sold it off piecemeal, and his art collection was scattered.
POW camp
The castle was requisitioned by the Italian government during World War II and was designated P.G. 12 Vincigliata, as a prisoner-of-war camp for distinguished military prisoners. It was a much smaller camp than the others, with no more than around twenty-five prisoners at any one time. The officers were separated from the non-commissioned officers and the only link between them was via the officers' batmen or servants who attended them. During the ebb and flow of the North African Campaign 1941/2, a number of high-ranking British officers were captured.
On arrival in Italy, most British POWs passed through the Italian transit camp at Capua and then moved to more permanent camps. In early 1942, the Italian army began to reorganise their POW camp system and commenced to number and classify them. The large camp at Sulmona, holding as many as 3,000 prisoners, in the Abruzzo outside Rome, became known as Campo concentramento di prigionieri di guerra 78, abbreviated to P.G. 78, which held a large number of British and Commonwealth officers and other ranks.
A small number of these senior officers and NCOs secured in the Villa Orsini were sent further north to P.G. 12 Vincigliata. They included Air-Marshal Owen Boyd, Lieutenant-General Richard O'Connor, Lieutenant-General Philip Neame, and Major-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, who wrote, "We learned that Vincigliati (sic) had belonged to an Englishman, a man called Temple-Leader. We considered he had restored the castello in the most thoughtless fashion, giving all his attention to what went on above ground, and regardless of the many underground passages that he had sealed up. He made things very difficult for us." The castle also included New Zealander Brigadiers Reginald Miles and James Hargest who reflected in his book, "One thing the late Temple-Leader had certainly done: he had erected a structure ideal for the purpose it was now put to—a prison."
Known prisoners, September 1941 – September 1943
British and Commonwealth officers
Armstrong, a South African, was the commanding officer of the 5th South African Infantry Brigade, which formed part of the South African 1st Infantry Division, formed August 1940. It served in East Africa and the Western Desert. He was captured at Sidi Rezeg in North Africa on 23 or 24 November 1941. He had the nickname "Oubaas" [and] "...was a jolly soul, who seemed quite undisturbed by prison life in Vincigliata." He received the DSO in 1942, and escaped during the Italian Armistice in September 1943—initially with other officers, including Dan Ranfurly, walking over the Apennines and down into Romagna, guided by a Benedictine monk Don Leone. "It was a terrible climb for Brigadier Armstrong who had a game leg. There was not enough food in the village, so we dispersed in small parties over a district of ten miles." He became a major-general, and chief of the general staff, South African Union Defence Force, before retiring in 1953.
Boyd was on his way to Egypt, in November 1940 as the new deputy commander of the British Air Forces in the Middle East. En route for Malta, the Wellington bomber in which he and his staff were passengers was forced down over enemy-controlled Sicily by a group of Italian fighters. After destroying his confidential papers by setting his own aircraft on fire, Boyd became a prisoner of war. He and his ADC Flight-Lieutenant Leeming, were sent to the Villa Orsini close to Sulmona PG 78, POW camp, joined later by Neame, O'Connor, Combe, Gambier-Parry, Todhunter and Younghusband, before being sent to Vincigliata some six months later.
He was involved with a number of escape plans. He was an expert carpenter, contributing to the tunnel work, and in March 1943 escaping with five other officers. After making it to Milan boarded a train for Como only to be arrested at the Swiss frontier. He escaped again during the Italian Armistice in September 1943, after time in the Italian countryside he successfully reached the Allied lines with Neame and O'Connor. He returned to England but in August 1944 he died of a heart attack.
De Wiart came from a well-connected continental family and was appointed by Churchill as head of a military mission en route to Yugoslavia. He was captured when his Wellington aircraft from Malta crash-landed in the sea off the coast of North Africa in April 1941. He had won a VC in World War I, on the Somme, being wounded eight times and losing a hand and eye. He was the alleged model for the flamboyant Brigadier Ritchie-Hook in Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy. He was sent to the villa Orsini (referred to as Medici in his book) close to Sulmona P.G. 78. Later, with other officers, he was sent to Vincigliata, where he made many escape attempts including through a successful tunnel with five others in March 1943.
He managed to evade capture for eight days disguised as an Italian peasant, no mean feat considering that he did not speak Italian, and was 61 years old, with an eye patch, and one empty sleeve. He was captured and returned to Vincigliata for the obligatory 30-day solitary confinement. In August 1943 he was selected by the Italian authorities to accompany an Italian negotiator, General Zanussi, to Rome then Lisbon to meet Allied contacts to facilitate the surrender. When they reached Lisbon, Carton de Wiart was released and made his way to England, by plane the same month. Within a month of his arrival, Churchill informed him that he was to be sent to China as his personal representative to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. He left by air for India in October 1943. In November 1944 he was promoted to lieutenant-general. At the war's end he retired to Ireland, and married for the second time.
Combe was a British Army officer before and during World War II. He was commanding officer of the 11th Hussars for the initial stages of the Western Desert Campaign. He was twice awarded the DSO for his service in the Western Desert Campaign before being captured in Cyrenaica in April 1941, with O'Connor and Neame. In Vincigliata he became one of the gardeners, as well as keeping sixteen hens, "and tended them like a mother." He was an enthusiastic escaper, taking turns in tunnelling, and one of the six officers to escape in April 1943. Unfortunately he was caught the next morning at Milan railway station, whilst studying a timetable. He escaped again with all remaining officers and men during the Italian Armistice in September 1943. He reached Camaldoli with Neame, O'Connor and other British officers. In Romagna, he joined the Italian partisans led by Libero as Riccardo Fedel was known. He arrived at Allied lines in May 1944, rejoining the Eighth Army.
In October 1944 he was given command of 2nd Armoured Brigade, until after the German surrender, with the rank of colonel. In 1945, he had brief periods as an acting major-general commanding successively 78th Infantry Division and 46th Infantry Division in Austria. In October 1946 his rank of major-general was made permanent and he was appointed Deputy GOC British Troops Austria. He retired from the army in October 1947, and married the same year. In 1945 he had become Colonel of the Regiment of the 11th Hussars, taking part in the procession behind the coffin at the funeral of King George VI in 1952. He relinquished the post in 1957.