Discover Peschiera del Garda Fortress

The fortress is a pentagon with a bastion at each corner, and the plan is the point -- angled bastions let defenders cover the ground in front of every wall with flanking fire, leaving no dead angle.

The walls are low and immensely thick, faced in brick and stone and backed with earth. This is the opposite of a medieval castle: nothing rises high enough to be a target.

The Mincio is channelled through and around the works, filling the ditches and dividing the town into sections joined by bridges -- so water is both defence and street plan.

Two monumental Venetian gates survive: Porta Verona and Porta Brescia, both carrying the lion of St Mark.

The Austrian additions of the nineteenth century -- outworks, magazines, barracks -- sit outside the Venetian core and are plainer and more purely functional.