Castello di Brescia

Medieval fortress perched on Colle Cidneo, close to historical center of the city. Between the 1237 and 1254 the enlargement of the walls is carried out; in the same period the keep was surrounded by defensive system consisting of six towers, covered passages and perhaps drawbridges. In the second half of the sixteenth century, with the return of Venetians, further improvements were made to fill the defects that emerged during the war: a new bastion wall was built, the ramparts of San Pietro, San Marco and San Faustino della Pusterla. The fortress was also equipped with buildings for the deposit of supplies, (Small and the Great Mile), ovens, barracks, religious buildings, cisterns and powder magazines. Today Castle houses Risorgimento Museum, Luigi Marzoli Weapons Museum and the Cidnea Specola. It is possible to visit the hidden environments of the fortress thanks to the guided tours by Brescia Speleological Association. Castle is accessed by an imposing sixteenth-century monumental portal, attributed to Giulio Savorgnan. Once through the entrance, you reach the bastion of San Pietro, also meeting a sixteenth-century well to which, in 1890, two stone lions by the sculptor Domenico Ghidoni were affixed. Climb the ramp to reach the fourteenth-century walls, with an entrance equipped with a double drawbridge: on the right rises Tower of Prisoners; on the left, along the keep, inside the wall one can still see traces of Ghibelline crenellation. Finally we reach the Northern Gardens, with Fossa dei Martiri (where, in 1945, some members of Resistance were shot) and Tower of the French were found. From the fourteenth-century drawbridge you can reach the top of the fortress, with the square of Mirabella Tower and the keep that houses the Museum of Arms.