I don't understand why pointer used in cast

Question

I do understand that this statement is casting a unsigned volatile char to a memory address but what I don't understand is the pointer after volatile.

#define PORTC *(unsigned char volatile *)(0x1003)

Answer 1

It says: treat the number 0x1003 as a volatile unsigned character pointer; read or write the (byte) value at that address, depending on how it is used:

unsigned char c = PORTC;   // read
PORTC = c + 1;             // write