In 1140 the Normans occupied Naples and chose the blockhouse on the Saviour's Islet as their fortress and then royal palace, when they received from the Pope the authority to reign over Naples and the Southern Italy as a kingdom. So they enlarged the fort and built over it the high towers (the main one was called "Normandy") which had been for a long time the symbol of the military power in Naples. The Angevins, who replaced the Normans in the 13th century, used the fortress to house the Royal Treasure and the Financial Tribunal for collecting taxes. The Aragonese kept it as a military centre, but they pulled down the high Norman towers (by then not useful anymore, because of the development of artillery) and restructured it.

In 1495 the castle was bombed by Charles VIII from the outpost of Pizzofalcone, during his famous "descent into Italy" that swept away the small Italian states and opened the way to the sharing out of the peninsula between France and Spain. In 1503 the castle was occupied by Louis XII King of France, but in the same year it passed under the Spanish, who occupied Naples and will have ruled over there for two centuries. After the great damages received during the three subsequent besiegements, Castel dell'Ovo was completely rebuilt by the Spanish in the shapes we actually see, with the bastions adapted to underlying rocks, which were covered by walls until the sea surface.  [ More...]