The only building in the historic centre of San Felice Circeo that can be attributed with certainty to the Knights Templar, built between 1239/1240 and 1259 on a base probably of Roman origin, during the period when the warrior monks held the Rocca Circea at the behest of the papacy. The square tower, originally with Guelph battlements, was raised by the Caetani in 1506 and again by Prince Poniatowski between 1808 and 1822. Today it dominates Piazza Vittorio Veneto, the heart of the village, and houses a permanent exhibition on the Palaeolithic finds from the caves of the promontory, as well as the collection left to the Municipality by the actress Elsa de Giorgi.
The complete lack of sources makes it impossible to establish exactly when the Circeo officially became part of the possessions of the Templar house of Santa Maria on the Aventine, seat of the provincial master of the Knights Templar in Italy. It is fairly certain, however, that the promontory passed to the warrior monks after 1239, when Pope Gregory IX called on the people of Terracina to rebuild the Rocca of the Circeo, without success.
After that the sources fall silent, and only thanks to a deed of exchange of 1259 between the Templar brother Pietro Fernandi, magister domus Militiae Templi in Italia, and Giordano Pironti, vice-chancellor and papal notary, do we know that the monks, after a stay of about twenty years, decided to give up the tenimentum of the Sorresca and the “locum Sancti Felicis situm in Monte Circeyo cum omnibus iuribus et pertinentiis suis spetialiter cum domibus, turri.” On this basis, the Templars’ presence at the Circeo can be dated from after 1239 to 1259.
The scale of the building works attributable to the years when the Templars turned their attention to this strip of land in the Marittima, attracted by the reliable profits of a forest and pastoral economy supplemented by fishing, shows the great interest of the Roman Templar house in the Circeo.
They were responsible for rebuilding and, above all, repopulating the old Roman town of Circeii, on whose remains the medieval village – today’s Historic Centre – was built, as well as the wonderful Tower that still dominates Piazza Vittorio Veneto with its bulk.
The Templar Tower is the only building that can be attributed with certainty to the Knights of the Temple. It was built on the podium of an earlier Roman building and has a solid square plan that originally rose to two levels, as shown by the battlements still visible, incorporated into the later heightening, probably carried out around the 16th century.
About halfway up, the volume narrows slightly, marked by a cornice with a 45° profile. The lower room, covered by a pointed barrel vault and without openings, seems to have served as a cistern for collecting water, leaving the upper room, reached through the side door still in use, and the top of the keep for specifically defensive functions.
The typological features of the Templar Tower do not belong to the architectural language of the medieval tower houses or fortified residences of noble families, common in Rome and Lazio in the Middle Ages, but fully belong to the language of military architecture developed in the Crusader East during the 12th century, not least with the contribution of the Templars themselves.
