Montagnana - Montagnana

Montagnana
I-PD-Montagnana06.JPG
StateItaly
RegionVeneto
TerritoryPaduan
Altitude16 m a.s.l.
Surface45.03 km²
Inhabitants9.294 (June 2014)
Name inhabitantsMontagnanesi
Prefix tel 39 0429
POSTAL CODE35044
Time zone UTC 1
PatronSanta Maria Assunta (August 15)
Position
Map of Italy
Reddot.svg
Montagnana
Institutional website

Montagnana is a city of Veneto.

To know

It is part of the most beautiful villages in Italy and has been awarded the orange flag by the Italian Touring Club. A walled city, Montagnana enchants with its high rectangular walls, punctuated by numerous towers interspersed and crenellated like the walls. The historic center within the walls is equally pleasant in appearance. The districts of the modern city rise outside the ancient center, well distanced from the old city, around whose walls a large strip of grassy land develops that has taken the place of the moat and has the advantage of further enhancing the charm of the curtain wall with its towers.

Geographical notes

In the Venetian Po valley, on the border between Paduan is Veronese, is 17 km from Legnago, 16 from Este, 19 from Badia Polesine, 24 from Monselice, 25 from Arquà Petrarca, 38 from Fratta Polesine, 50 from Padua.

Background

The early medieval fortifications, which are supposed to have been strengthened in the 10th century in defense of the Hungarian raids, consisted almost exclusively of embankments, palisades, ditches and barriers of thorny plants (some memories remain in old toponyms of the internal streets). Montagnana is mentioned as a castrum in a document dated 996. In the following centuries numerous documentary testimonies attest to its defensive and protective function to the advantage of the surrounding villages whose inhabitants were required to maintain the defensive apparatus (walls, bertesche, bridge) and to serve military service against the castrum considered a common refuge of vital importance for the safety of all. Ezzelino III da Romano known as the Tyrant (1194-1259), taken and burned Montagnana in 1242, provided the site with fortifications suitable for the time. The keep of the castle of San Zeno (now accessible up to the top) is attributed to him.

The fortifications as we see them were completed by the da Carrara, Paduan lords, in the first half of the fourteenth century with the aim of defending their territory wedged between the Scaliger and those of Venice. Belonged in the Middle Ages to the Obertenghi of Tuscany the city was then a free municipality. A series of noble dominations followed one another: Ezzelini, Este, da Carrara, Scaligeri. In 1405 the painless passage under the dominion of the Republic of Venice made the military function of the walled city disappear, which had been the object of disputes and expansionist appetites from part of Padua is Verona. The city will follow the fate of the Serenissima until its end; entered the Lombardo Veneto, it became Italian after the Third War of Independence.

Montagnana, Palazzo Magnavin-Foratti, presumed residence of Gattamelata


How to orient yourself

The historic core, wonderfully intact, is all inside the high crenellated walls, beyond which the bell towers of the churches stand out, between the battlements and the towers of the defenses. The tour of the walls takes advantage, visually, of the large area of ​​respect held in the lawn. The ring road avenues, beyond which the neighborhoods of the contemporary city have developed, are planted on the side facing the walls, as if to separate and safeguard from the intermixing with the modern the ancient city.

The main axis of the urban plan of the walled center is via Matteotti, on the sides of which there are the most important buildings, which leads to the main square where the Duomo. Side streets branch off from via Matteotti leading to smaller churches and more modest buildings.

Neighborhoods

The municipal territory of Montagnana also includes the following hamlets and localities: Borgo Frassine, Borgo San Marco, Borgo San Zeno; localities: Caprano, Cicogna, Monastero, Ranfolina, Rovenega.

Parking lots

Italian traffic signs - parking.svg

  • 1 Parking for Camper - bus - car, North outer ring road. 
  • 2 Parking for cars, South outer ring road (70 seats). 
  • 3 Parking for cars, Via Adua. 


How to get

By plane

Italian traffic signs - verso bianco.svg

By car

On the train

  • Italian traffic signs - fs.svg station icon7 Railway station. It has its own station on the railway line Mantua - Monselice 


How to get around

The small size of the walled city allows for a pedestrian visit.

What see

The walls
Walls and Porta XX Settembre
Fortress of the Trees
San Zeno Castle
The Transfiguration of Christ - Paolo Veronese
The dome
  • Main attraction1 Walls. The current walls are one of the most distinguished and best preserved examples of medieval military architecture in Europe. With the exception of the Castel San Zeno complex and the stretches of walls to the east and west which are older, date back to the mid-fourteenth century when the Carraresi, lords of Padua, wanted to expand and strengthen what was an essential strong border place of the Paduan state against there Verona of the Scaligeri, which dominated the neighbor Legnago. The urban space intra moenia on that occasion it was enlarged, and the new enclosure was built with superimposed layers of bricks and trachyte stones transported by water from the nearby Euganean hills. The fortified city is enclosed in an irregular quadrilateral measuring approximately 600 x 300 meters with an area of ​​24 hectares and a perimeter of approximately two kilometers. The walls, crowned by Guelph-type merlons, are 6.5 to 8 meters high, with a thickness of 96-100 cm. Between one blackbird and another, wooden fans served to repair the defenders. The perimeter towers, in total 24, spaced about 60 meters, are between 17 and 19 meters high. The external valley varies from 30 to 40 meters.
Inside the arches that support the patrol path were the warehouses (canipe) for the custody of goods produced in the countryside: the hollows to fix the wooden armours can still be seen. In the towers, with several floors and covered by a sloping roof hidden under the pitch equipped with a launching machine, there were other warehouses and quarters for the soldiers placed as garrison of the fortress in times of war emergency. An area devoid of buildings and used as a cultivated pomerium to face long sieges, was all around the walls from the inside.
Around the walls ran a large moat (the current picturesque and green valley) flooded with the water of the Frassine river (border towards the Vicentino) derived by means of a canal with raised embankments (the Fiumicello) serving as a defensive wall of weld along which, on the Paduan side, there was an elevated menagerie for the concentration of troops. All around the Montagnano area were impassable swamps or floodplays in the event of war, so that the walled city was the key to the Paduan border towards the west. The military structure was moreover surrounded by four advanced perimeter fortifications (the bastions), now disappeared, and the two fortresses placed in defense of the two gates were also surrounded by a moat on the city side. The fortress, in its time, was impregnable and in fact until the advent of the large guns in the sixteenth century it was never conquered militarily. 
  • 2 Fortress of the Trees. The Rocca degli Alberi, which rises imposing and picturesque on the valley from the west, was built by the Carraresi in the two-year period 1360-62 with an exclusively military function. The fortified entrance was made up of a complex defensive system: along the transit entrance hall, dominated by two towers, there were four swing doors, two shutters and four rocker drawbridges. Similar system was in Castel San Zeno. Since 1964 the fortress has housed the youth hostel and can be visited in the period from April to October. 
  • 3 Keep. The Keep is an imposing tower of about 40 meters in height which must have been a privileged point for sighting and defending the city. It was built in 1242 by the tyrant Ezzelino da Romano who, after having conquered and set fire to the city, decided to equip it with new defensive structures. Originally it had to be lower and covered by a wooden roof surmounted by a guardhouse: from here the Montagnanese soldiers could spot the enemies coming from Padua or from Venice. 
  • 4 San Zeno Castle. The castle, whose toponym derives from the nearby church of San Zeno, recalls a phase of expansion of the Veronese diocese; it stands on the site of an early medieval settlement which was the residence of the heirs of Ugo the Great of Tuscany later became the marquises of Este. Today's construction, except for the Venetian wing and the Austrian superstructures, dates back to the 13th century, when Ezzelino, after having set it on fire in 1242, wanted to better fortify Montagnana. The building has a rectangular plan (46 x 26 meters) with a large internal courtyard. Until the early 19th century, the castle was surrounded by a moat which also isolated it from the city side. The structure was completed by towers (two remain) and the nearby keep (about 40 meters high). Initially the drawbridge, which crossed the valley allowing access to the city, probably led to the inner courtyard of the castle. It is assumed that the passage was then moved to the south side of the castle itself, protected both by this and by the high keep. When Padua, Verona and the other cities of the Veneto were subdued by Venice and their mutual continuous struggles ceased, Montagnana prospered as an agricultural production area and in particular for hemp, whose fibers were necessary for the ropes and sails of the Venetian arsenal. The castle of San Zeno was then used as a deposit for this production.The castle continued to be used as a district of military accommodation and, later, also with the Kingdom of Italy until the First World War. A view of the castle of San Zeno, seen from the north-east as it appeared in the 16th century, is reproduced in a precious sanguine drawing attributed to Giorgione, now preserved in the Boymans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam. 
  • 5 Duomo. The Cathedral (1431-1502) stretches out over the large central square, with its imposing late-Gothic forms with Renaissance additions. Inside you can admire: the Transfiguration of Paolo Veronese, three tables by Giovanni Buonconsiglio known as Marescalco (16th century), a large votive canvas of considerable documentary value reproducing the Battle of Lepanto (1571). The walls are adorned with refined decorations and frescoes, among which the one of the apsidal basin by Buonconsiglio, and, on the sides of the entrance, the Judith and the David, recently attributed to Giorgione. 


Events and parties

  • 8 Palio of the 10 municipalities (in the esplanade of the walls). Simple icon time.svgThe first Sunday of September. Palio in costume which aims to remember the battles of the past for the possession of the city. 


What to do


Shopping

In Montagnana (and in 15 other municipalities between the Euganean Hills and Berici Mountains) the sweet raw ham from Montagnana obtained according to ancient methods of seasoning and salting; in 1996 it obtained the mark Veneto raw ham Berico-Euganeo DOP (Protected designation of origin). This fine salami goes well with melon, which is also the pride of local agricultural production.

How to have fun

Shows


Where to eat

Average prices


Where stay

Moderate prices

Average prices

Bed and Breakfast


Safety

Italian traffic signs - pharmacy icon.svgPharmacies

  • 10 Gambarin, Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, 8, ☎ 39 0429 81267. 
  • 11 Poletti, Via Carrarese, 7, ☎ 39 0429 81494. 
  • 12 Lancerotto, Via Carrarese, 2, ☎ 39 0429 81211. 

Parapharmacies

  • 13 Parapharmacy Dr. Bizzo, Via Dei Montagnana 12. 
  • 14 San Marco Parapharmacy, Via Chiesa, 60 (in Borgo San Marco), ☎ 39 0429 805625, fax: 39 0429 805151. 


How to keep in touch

Post office

  • 15 Italian post, via Giacomo Matteotti 55, ☎ 39 0429 806911, fax: 39 0429 804841. 


Around

  • Arquà Petrarca
  • Badia Polesine - It is the center of reference of the Polesine western, developed around the ancient abbey of Vangadizza, of which some remains remain; it preserves beautiful buildings that ennoble the center.
  • Este - Cradle of the Este family, it preserves the Carraresi castle with its fortifications. It maintains a noble aspect given to it by the seventeenth-eighteenth-century palaces that the Venetian nobility built there.
  • Legnago - It was one of the cornerstones of quadrilateral of Austrian fortresses with Peschiera del Garda, Mantua is Verona. Of the ancient fortifications only a tower remains. It has buildings of some interest.
  • Monselice - The fortified core of the castle and the path of the Sanctuary of the seven churches dominate the city from the hill that flanks it. The historic center and the Old Cathedral are interesting.

Itineraries

Useful information


Other projects

  • Collaborate on WikipediaWikipedia contains an entry concerning Montagnana
  • Collaborate on CommonsCommons contains images or other files on Montagnana
  • Collaborate on WikiquoteWikiquote contains quotes from or about Montagnana
2-4 star.svgUsable : the article respects the characteristics of a draft but in addition it contains enough information to allow a short visit to the city. Use i correctly listing (the right type in the right sections).