How Was Noale Built

The Rocca dei Tempesta is the town's architecture. A polygonal brick enclosure with corner towers and a keep, thirteenth and fourteenth century, standing on an artificial island entirely surrounded by a broad moat fed from the Marzenego. What survives are the walls and towers rather than the interior buildings, which is what makes the plan so legible.

The Torre dell'Orologio is the surviving gate of the walled town -- a brick tower with a clock face, through which the road still passes into the square.

The Torre delle Campane, the separate bell tower, is the other medieval survival, and the two towers together frame the centre.

Piazza Castello is a long arcaded square, the arcades of the Venetian centuries built over medieval foundations -- the standard Veneto mainland formula, done at small-town scale.

The Duomo dei Santi Felice e Fortunato was substantially rebuilt in later centuries and is plainer than the fortifications around it.