Castel San Giovanni, Finale Ligure site features

The thing to look for is the octagon. The mid-fifteenth-century torrione on whose ruins the fort was raised is not gone: it constitutes the fortress's central body, octagonal in plan. Everything the Spanish built in 1642-43 is arranged around it.

There is a church inside the complex, with its own bell tower. The campanile of the church enclosed within the fortress is visible from outside the walls, and it is the detail that most readily distinguishes this work from a purely military enclosure.

The fort is low and sited, not tall and commanding. At 50 m above sea level it sits well below Castel Gavone, because its job was the slope rather than the summit: it denies the ground immediately beneath the castle to anyone wanting to put artillery there.

And it is joined to the town. Among the works Gaspare Beretta directed between 1674 and 1678 was the direct connection with the borgo, along with the reinforcement of the fortifications. The fort and Finalborgo were built to function as one position.

The octagonal tower at the centre

A torrione of the mid-fifteenth century, recorded by Gianmario Filelfo and known from a drawing of 1571, which the Spanish fort of 1642-43 was built over rather than away from. It is now the octagonal central body of the fortress, and it is the single most interesting thing on the site.

The church and its campanile

A church is enclosed within the complex and its bell tower rises above the walls. A chapel inside a working artillery fort is ordinary for the period and striking to see.

The direct link to Finalborgo

Built under Gaspare Beretta between 1674 and 1678, together with the reinforcement of the fortifications. It is the physical expression of what the fort was for: not an isolated strongpoint but the upper half of the capital's defences.

The position relative to Castel Gavone

The fort holds the slope below Castel Gavone, preventing the installation of enemy artillery there. Seen from the castle, the logic is immediate; seen from the borgo, the two works stack up the hillside.

The prison years

From 1822 the fort was a penitentiary. It passed into the state demesne in 1960 and has been entirely restored in recent years — so what a visitor meets is a restored fortress that spent well over a century as a jail.