Discover Cittadella City Walls

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.