Used as barracks for military dwelling within the castle walls since the middle Ages, the Norman-Swabian Mastio was a prison since the early mid-19th century when the Bourbon government decided to implant a penal colony in which the convicted were forced to work. The colony used by the naval Forces was later replaced by a prison in 1880 and used until May 1960.
Local elderly still remember the arrangements of the rooms. Next to the Chapel, in today's elevator room, the guard body was located and until a few years ago there were still the remains of the wooden rack used for the weapons. Still visible the wooden spit cover shutter, also used to pass documents. Leaving the Chapel, there was the Management office on the right, well visible in a photo of the 1920s depicting the entire staff of the jail managed by Director Umberto Spanò.
The cells of the detainees were located along the wall of the Mastio surrounded by towers, now angular, now median, which housed, among other things, a water tank (north tower), another cell for the prisoners ( south tower), and a mortuary chamber (south-east tower), whose exterior still has an impressive inscription in lava stones, which remembers the death of 1750 local inhabitants.
Courtyard of the Mastio, around 1920 - Personnel of the prison
(back of the Director’s office located next to the Chapel)
The tallest and mightiest of towers, the Norman tower, housed the dreaded punishment cell, while the infirmary was located in the large room at the base of the central staircase of the courtyard which was used as yard time for the detainees and as a water reserve, as evidenced by the central well with its tank underneath. The most suggestive environment of the Mastio is the large hall with a big fireplace, former residence of Milazzo's Military Authority that housed the prison's archives and was previously divided by a rustic wooden loft.
A series of low-pitched houses, nowadays demolished, occupied a part of the courtyard, detracting the monumental complex and attracting in the 1920s the complaints of the authority for the protection of cultural heritage also for unauthorized maintenance works.
In the pictures: the large room with a fireplace when it was used as a prison archive and the documents reporting the complaints of the Heritage Department (1922/23)
Two peasants from the province of Messina arrested for theft and both released in the summer of 1899 after having been in jail for 6 months in the Mastio. The papers reproduced here remember the detention for the theft of a donkey and of about 90 liters of citrus fruit (lemon grove).
In the photos: the Mastio in 1965, five years after the closing of the prison (archive Engineer Domenico Ryolo)
