Construction materials

The luxuriousness of the construction materials and decorations within Castel del Monte is made evident above all by the polychromy, with blond Murge limestone - used in large regular blocks for the internal and external walls - combining with the coral breccia, probably quarried in an area not too far from that of the castle and reserved for the most representative elements. Examples are the entrance portal, the door jambs, the vaguely Gothic external jambs of the upper windows, the walls up to the height of the frame and the semi-columns with capitals. Among the colored marbles employed was the cipollino green marble, of which a slab is preserved in the first room on the upper floor.

Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, travelers passing through Castel del Monte were still enraptured by the coral breccia fireplaces, the geometric patterned floors, the white marble seats, the mosaics of the vaults and the marble coverings, whose existence and placing we can today only infer from the position of the hooks that held them in place.

From this room, whose keystone is decorated with refined plant motifs, one can access the courtyard through a portal with pointed arches, set on small columns.