Top 8 Castles around Bettona

Bring some cash to climb the tower 😀

ARCHITECTURAL STRATIFICATIONS Visiting this area of the Rocca, where Via Bagliona meets the shorter Via alla Piazza Gran-de, the complex and fascinating interplay between the remains of the medieval quarter and the structures of the papal fortress can be seen more clearly. The limestone and travertine walls of the ground floor of the medieval buildings, the pointed arches of the entrances to houses and shops and the base of Gentile Ba-glioni's tower blend with the brick vaults that cover the streets and the great foundation columns of the fortress. The old buildings were gutted and the underground chambers of the Rocca Paolina made. The destruction of a large part of the city and the construction of the Rocca in its place was a tearing wound for Perugia, which thus lost the quarter with its most elegant houses and the church of Santa Maria dei Servi, which housed many tombs of noble families and remarkable works of art. The keystone of its entrance is still visible. One of the frescoes by Benedetto Bonfigli (second half of the 15th century) in the chapel of the Palazzo dei Priori (now part of the National Gallery of Umbria) represents precisely this area of the medieval city and remains the most important evidence of how it was before the construction of the fortress.

ROCCA PAOLINA This underground structure, known as Rocca Paolina ("Pauline Fortress"), is the result of the building on buildings that took place in different eras. In the Middle Ages (12th-16th centuries) in this district stood the tower houses of some aristocratic Perugian families. In the 15th century the most important of these buildings belonged to the Baglioni family, the most powerful in Renaissance Perugia. In 1540, after the Salt War, which broke out following the rise in the price of salt and the refusal of Perugia to accept the rule of the Pope, Perugia lost its independence and was annexed to the Papal States. Pope Paul II had a fortress built to definitively subjugate the city and commissioned the architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger to build it in this area, raising it above the medieval buildings. The fortress was called "Rocca Paolina" because Paul Ill ordered its construction. To speed up the works, which were completed in 1543, the fortress did not completely eliminate the existing buildings, but instead integrated them, preserving many parts (walls, corners, streets, arches), creating the effect of a practically unique underground city. The ancient road network, and in particular the long Via Bagliona that runs through the entire fortress, is still clearly visible today; in the Middle Ages these streets were of course open to the sky, and above the buildings rose tall towers, the instruments and symbols of power and prestige. Only one of the many towers that existed in the medieval city remains intact today in another area of the historic center, the Torre degli Sciri (or Torre degli Scalzi), but more or less considerable fragments can still be identified of about thirty of the forty towers remembered by tradition.

Rocca Sonora, the undisputed symbol of Gualdo Cattaneo.

From the Partigiani car park, the big surprise! Escalators take you back a thousand years. You enter a medieval landscape with buildings and narrow streets that are as intact as they were centuries ago.

The castle is located on a rocky peak, making the construction of a motte unnecessary. The walls are protected by square corner towers. The large keep and the walls date back to the castle's early days. The battlements and machicolations attached to the walls are clearly visible. On the first floor of the palace there is a large ballroom with rich decorations. The inner courtyard is quite small in relation to the entire complex. In the middle of the 15th century, Giacomo Piccinino built a twelve-sided tower to the west of the castle on a wall with a battlement. The last extension took place in 1538. A round bastion was built at the entrance, which could accommodate artillery.

Bogo dominating the Puglia valley, a tributary of the Tiber; very well renovated, it is surrounded by mighty fifteenth-century walls

The Rocca Borgia (or Rocca Sonora) is the true protagonist of the village of GualdoCattaneo. The direct link with a famous figure like Alessandro Borgia and its singularity on an architectural level make this building truly unique in the Umbrian defensive panorama. It was built between 1494 and 1498, designed by Francesco di Bartolomeo da Pietrasanta according to the military canons of the time, which with the advent of artillery were substantially changing the appearance of all the defensive structures. It is a triangular fortress with a central keep and two lateral walls communicating with each other through a complex system of underground tunnels.