[2] In ancient times the city of Lampeteia or Clampetia, a probable Crotonian colony also inhabited by indigenous Bruttian people, stood in Amantean territory.

Amantea was at the center of the events of the so-called "ninety-year war" between Anjou and Aragon for the possession of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, which followed the casus belli of the Sicilian Vespers.

[10] The castle returned to the Angevins by virtue of the Peace of Caltabellotta in 1302: after a period of retaliation against the Amanteans for their Aragonese faith, the city obtained from the last Angevin-Durassic rulers important exemptions and privileges that brought an increase in population.

[12][13] Amantea also risked being enfeoffed in the seventeenth century, on two occasions, due to the constant depletion of viceregal coffers: the first by the prince of nearby Belmonte Giovanni Battista Ravaschieri in 1630-1633, and the second by the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinando II de' Medici in 1647.

[15] During the brief interlude of the occupation of Charles VIII of France (1496-1498), the castellan Giovanni Tommaso Carafa had to side with the French, but the population sent a delegation to pay homage to the ousted Aragonese ruler Ferrante of Aragon, who had taken refuge in Ischia.

In 1536 Juan Sarmiento, sent by Charles V of Habsburg to check the state of the fortifications of the Viceroyalty, reported that the castle, in the words of local historian Gabriele Turchi, was "unsuitable even as a shelter for thieves.

[19] During the events of the Neapolitan Republic (1799), Amantea spontaneously surrendered to the Jacobins: the population in fact disarmed the castle garrison, and planted the tree of liberty, led by Ridolfo Mirabelli, leader of the square during the brief revolutionary period.

Amantea was occupied on March 12, 1806 by a detachment of 200 Polish vaulters, who remained barricaded in the castle until news of the French defeat at the Battle of Maida (July 4, 1806).

Within the city walls the Bourbon chieftains began to organize resistance to the impending counterattack in force by the French, similar to what was being done in neighboring countries.

In any case, the main French attack began on December 5, 1806: the besieging forces amounted to 5,000 men with an artillery division commanded by Generals Guillaume Philibert Duhesme, Jean Reynier, Jean-Antoine Verdier, and the Amantea-born Lieutenant Colonel Luigi Amato.

The besieged Bourbons amounted to a few hundred, equipped with 12 guns in all, and were led by Ridolfo Mirabelli, who at the end of the siege would be decorated with the rank of lieutenant colonel by King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies.

It was probably in the Norman and Swabian ages that the southern part of the hill was heavily fortified, decentralized with respect to the built-up area,[12] but aimed at the objectives that were of interest to keep under control at that time, namely the communication routes between the coast and the interior.

This large quadrangle was all surrounded by a moat, already overgrown with weeds in the 18th century, and still existing today: in particular, the masonry part of the secondary access to the castle on the northern side remains.

Beyond the moat, the rest of the plateau was surrounded by a crumbling wall as early as the eighteenth century, which formed a sort of "citadel" or "advance" designed to trap the enemy who managed to penetrate it (a structure similar to that of the nearby castle of Aiello Calabro).

It is possible to go up to the castle from at least four paths, which are rather difficult: one starts from Strada Tirrena just before the confluence with Corso Umberto I, another begins to the right of the Carmine church in Corso Umberto I, a third (Salita San Francesco) runs from the ancient city gate until it reaches the ruins of the Franciscan complex below the Angevin tower, and a fourth one starts from the Collegio church (to which the imposing ruins of the former Jesuit college are annexed).