Scaligero Castle of Monzambano

The castle is the oldest part of Monzambano. Perched on top of the town, it follows the trend of the ridge of the two hills on which Monzambano sits.
It is a castle-reception, built in its current form during the 13th century, in place of a previous fortification.
This construction was commissioned by the Scaligeri family as a border defensive structure (the Bonacolsi pressed first to the south, and then the Gonzaga, and the Visconti to the west), forming part of a broader defense plan for the right bank of the Mincio which exploited the reliefs of Ponti sul Mincio and Monzambano and then continue towards Valeggio and Villafranca creating a sort of border line.
The “castrum” has all the characteristics of a Scaligera military structure: shielded towers, defensive moat (in this case, given the position, it could not be filled with water), drawbridge (with two entrances: carriageway and pedestrian), two doors plus a defense ring at the entrance, imposing walls with a patrol walkway that runs along the entire perimeter…

The main defensive nucleus was located at the south-western summit of the fortification, dominated by a mighty keep which must originally have been flanked by a large building; this area, perhaps during the 14th century, was further fortified with the erection of an internal surrounding wall.

Together with the keep and the gate, five other shielded towers completed the system, two placed in a corner position and three in an intermediate position, connected to each other by a wooden patrol walkway, which disappeared but was mentioned in a Venetian document from 1408.
Precisely thanks to this document, which listed the interventions that had to be carried out to repair and fortify the castle, it was possible to learn of the fact that some of the towers were identified with a proper name: the keep was therefore “the Guard of San Marco ” the other two towers on the west side were “la Campagna” and “la Ghibellina”, the current bell tower was indeed “la Campana” and the entrance tower was “la Porta Veronesa.

Inside the walls, the first thing you notice is the Church of San Biagio, built in 1835 on the remains of a much older church, from the Romanesque period: it would probably be Santa Maria al Mincio, a very ancient church (certainly prior to One thousand) and which evidently had dimensions much larger than the current ones.

Around the Church, during works carried out at the end of the 1990s, burials (about 80) contemporary with the Church were found. This strengthens the hypothesis that it was an important religious center. One could assume that defensive walls already existed at the time, but there are no remains of masonry to prove this.

The most interesting part of the visit is certainly the bell tower, built in the centuries following the construction of the rest of the castle, as always happened with the tower on which the clock was placed, so that it was visible from all the surrounding area.
From above you can enjoy a beautiful panorama that includes the Castle of Ponti sul Mincio, that of Valeggio (it is easy to understand how they are on a line), the Church of S. Michele Arcangelo and the Mincio river.

The new multimedia space was also recently inaugurated in the entrance tower, which interactively recounts the history and events of the Castle and its ancient inhabitants.