Cedar and I joined some friends on a walk to a castle ruin on one lovely day.  The path is surprisingly close to our home, only about 20 minutes away, and it is pretty easy at about 1.5 miles to reach the castle.  The castle was super neat to explore.  It’s so cool to stand in a castle ruin and imagine all the people who were here before us.  On the way, we found chestnuts, which are a big deal here in Italy in the fall and winter!  Here is info about the castle, according to Wikipedia:

The construction of the Matinale is attributed to Tommaso II d’Aquino , Count of Acerra , on the occasion of his wedding with Margherita di Svevia , illegitimate daughter of Emperor Federico II , a wedding that took place before 1247 . According to the local tradition ^[2] an original Lombard fortification of the ninth century would have been the work of a certain Rudovaco and would have passed to his death to the count of Acerra , Cullezio. He wanted to combine his castle of Acerra with that of Cancello with an underground route, causing the ruin of the western side and could not provide for the restoration following his death in battle. The castle would have been restored or rebuilt then by the Norman Ramperto and again by the Mattaloni counts in the twelfth century .The castle hosted the kings of Sicily Guglielmo il Malo (1131-1166) and Manfredi di Svevia (1232-1266) and the dukes of Rebursa and again, in the Angevin era , King Ladislao I and Carafa in the Aragonese period . In the fifteenth century it was abandoned, having lost its military function. It was the seat of an inn and probably housed an archpriest church dedicated to St. Thomas the Apostle. In 1799 the French general Jean Étienne Championnet established his headquarters there and later became a den of brigands . It was donated to the baron Giovanni Barracco at the beginning of the twentieth century by the D’Aquino family , princes of Caramanico . During the Second World War it hosted the Allied command in 1943 .