Cittadella City Walls Site Features

The circuit is an ellipse, not a polygon -- unusual, and a rational choice on featureless flat ground, since a curve encloses the most ground for the least wall and presents no vulnerable corners.

The fabric is brick over a stone base, about 14 metres high, topped by a continuous walkway with a crenellated parapet. Thirty-two towers project at intervals so defenders could sweep the wall face, and a wet moat runs the whole way round.

The four gates point at the towns they watched: Porta Bassano north, Porta Padova south, Porta Treviso east, Porta Vicenza west. Porta Bassano is the largest and carries the Casa del Capitano with its sixteenth-century frescoes.

What the walls conspicuously lack is any angled bastion. Gunpowder made this design obsolete in the fifteenth century, and Venice fortified elsewhere -- which is exactly why a purely medieval circuit survives.

The full rampart circuit

About 1.5 km at roughly 15 metres, looking into the town on one side and the plain on the other.

The view north

On a clear day the Prealps and Dolomites along the horizon -- best in winter after rain.

Porta Bassano and the Casa del Capitano

The main gate, the ticket office and the frescoed captain's house.

The 1220 street plan

From above, the two axial streets and four gates of the original design are plainly legible.

The walls enclose the whole town in an ellipse on entirely flat ground -- there is no hill, no river bend, nothing natural to build on, which is why they had to be this substantial. From the rampart the plain runs level in every direction, with the Prealps and Dolomites along the northern horizon some 30 to 50 km away.