A Visit to the Fortress

Come with us!! We'll go for a walk inside the fortress and we'll also visit some of the rooms which are usually closed to the public. 

As you can see from the map the fortress lies on the eastern end of the 'Prato Gardens' and very old trees hide the entrance from our view until we get really close to it.

Neither the moat around the fortress nor the drawbridge can be seen today, but we can still distinguish some holes for the drawbridge chains and some old embrasures. 

Above the entrance door is a big coat of arms of the Medici family. 

When we enter we find ourselves in a big square room and a long corridor on our right takes us up to the top of the fortress. A door in  the corridor leads to the many rooms inside the fortress, which are unfortunately still closed to the public and can only be visited with special permits. 

Most of the bastions had secret underground passages, tunnels leading to the embrasures on the outside walls, there were wells, a water cistern and many other rooms, among which some gun powder stores.

Here are some photos of the inside:  

None of the buildings inside the fortress is left, we know there  was the church of San Donato, for example, but today there's only a big garden with many old trees along the outside walls. 

It's nice to walk all around the fortress and enjoy the view of the town:  there are even some Roman remains to see!! This archeological area here below the Bastione La Spina and Belvedere was a sacred complex of the triad Jupiter, Juno and Minerva and not much farther in a vineyard below the Bastione Belvedere and Bastione della Chiesa we can still see some stones belonging to a Roman theatre. 

Another part of the fortress has been recently restored  and it's quite interesting to see: there is an  entrance door with a coat of arms of the Medici family and some walls.