Why are there so many magnificent fortified towns in the Veneto region? In our previous posts we’ve mentioned our visits to Castelfranco Veneto, Monselice and Este, quite apart from the several others we’ve seen but not yet written about.

The answers are easy to see. The Veneto region lies at the crossroads of three major invading powers: the Saracenic, the Hapsburg and the north Italian Visconti and Sforza. Venice itself, it will be remembered, was founded on the natural defences of lagoon islands by fleeing refugees as a protection against invading goths. When Venice developed and expanded its maritime republic, its outposts away from the seashore needed to have equally strong defences – especially if they were situated on a vast flat alluvial plain with no protective hills on which to perch fortifications.

It would be difficult to say which are the finest fortifications in Veneto but the detour to Montagnana suggested by guests from that same town was more than worth the extra time added on our journey.

Imagine an almost Disneyland-like walled mediaeval town and there, in Montagnana, you have it for real.

It’s no wonder Montagnana, part of the Venetian republic until 1797, was never conquered!

Enclosed in a quadrilateral 600 by 300 metres, giving a perimeter of two kilometres, Montagnana’s walls are clearly not as extensive as Lucca’s but they are much older, dating from the fourteenth century and, thus, before the development of firepower changed the whole logistics of city fortifications.

Montagnana’s walls are eight metres high and a metre thick and are fully battlemented, so that archers could protect themselves from one arrow launch and the next. Every 60 metres there is a tower around 19 metres high. There are 24 in all! Encircling the walls is a vallum, or moat, over 30 metres wide, much of which is still filled with water from the river Frassine.

Within the walls are launching areas for catapults, armament storage depots and accommodation for the military. There are even extensive vegetables gardens, essential for withstanding a long siege.

Even if the invading forces managed to get anywhere near the magnificent Montagnana walls they would have had to go past four outer bulwarks and, if that wasn’t enough, wade through malaria-infested swamps and flooded fields.

Entry to the town is through the gates of San Zeno castle, controlling the route to Padua, and the Rocca degli Alberi, controlling the westward route to Verona. Later gateways were opened much later when the railway was built…

We didn’t have much time to visit the town enclosed within these superlative walls. But it looked architecturally rich with fine palaces and glorious churches, some of which contained paintings by such greats as Veronese.

I think we’ll definitely have to return to the area for there is still another extraordinary walled town we have to visit, Cittadella.

I’d never imagined such glorious wealth of walled towns in the Veneto region of Italy. I should have known better of course. After all who hasn’t delighted in such places as Verona and Padua? The difference here, however, is that the walls stand clear in their own ample ground, (rather like Lucca) and are not smothered by later accretions.

O for a time when the ultimate development in defence technology were such things. Could there possibly be anything approaching such beauty when talking about nuclear bunkers or missile stations