Cittadella discovery guide

Most Italian towns that kept their walls kept a fragment. Cittadella kept all of it -- a complete elliptical circuit, moat included, with a continuous walkway along the top that reopened in 2013 after a long restoration.

The rampart walk is the experience: about 1.5 km at roughly fifteen metres up, looking down into the medieval street grid on one side and out across the plain on the other. On clear days the Dolomites stand along the northern horizon.

What makes it more interesting than a pretty wall is that Cittadella is a designed town. Padua built it from nothing in 1220 as a strategic counter to Treviso, and laid it out as an ellipse with two axial streets crossing at the centre and a gate at each end. You can see the entire plan at once from above, which is rare.

It is also genuinely easy: half an hour by train from Padua, an hour from Venice, and the station is a few minutes from a gate.

April to June and September to October are the best months: comfortable temperatures for a walk with no shade, and the clearest air for the view north to the Dolomites.

Winter has one specific advantage -- the mountains are snow-covered and, on a clear day after rain, spectacularly visible from the rampart. It is cold and exposed up there, but the view is at its best.

Summer is hot and the walkway offers no shade at all; go early or late in the day rather than at midday.

Check the walkway's opening hours before travelling, as they are seasonal and shorter in winter.

If you travel slowly: Cittadella is honestly a half-day town. Pair it with Bassano to the north or Padua to the south rather than trying to stretch it.

If you want the essentials: the full rampart circuit, the Casa del Capitano beneath Porta Bassano, and a walk down the axial street to the Duomo. Two to three hours.

If you're after local character: Saturday morning market inside the walls, which is where the surrounding countryside comes to shop.

If you want to go past the obvious: the Torre di Malta at Porta Padova -- Ezzelino da Romano's prison tower, and grim enough in reputation that Dante put it in the Paradiso.

Cittadella is a working small town of about twenty thousand people rather than a preserved monument, and the walls run directly over inhabited streets. On the rampart you are looking into people's gardens and upper windows -- worth remembering with a camera.

The wall itself is thirteenth-century brick under continuous foot traffic, restored at considerable public expense. The ticket for the rampart walk funds its maintenance, and it is inexpensive.

Because the town is compact and flat, and the station is a short walk from Porta Bassano, this is one of the few places in the Veneto where arriving by train and leaving the car behind is straightforwardly the easier option.

The Saturday market fills the central streets and is a genuine local market -- the town at its most ordinary, and the best time to spend money in it.

What a visitor actually spends in Cittadella

Cittadella is one of the cheapest days out in the Veneto -- the main attraction costs about the price of a coffee and a half, and the town is not priced for visitors.