Bastione delle Maddalene

The Bastion of Maddalene is part of the magistral city wall of Verona.

Ezzelino III da Romano was the author of the first enlargement of the city walls of Verona after the flood of 1239. But it was in the Scaligeri era, in 1287, that Alberto I Della Scala built the turreted walls of Campo Marzo, extending the walls from the left bank of the Adige to Porta Vescovo. Subsequently, Cangrande della Scala made significant changes to the city, both for military and civil works: in those years, the Walled City mitigated its historical connotation as a military frontier outpost, to progressively change into a Civitas, a centre of culture and faith.

In 1527, by the will of the Serenissima Republic of Venice, the bastion and the curtain between the bastion and Porta Vescovo was built.

The Veronese Michele Sanmicheli, remembered as one of the greatest military architects of the time, was for a long time considered the author of the Bastion of the Maddalene, which was actually built by Pier Francesco da Viterbo, who directed the defensive renovation work introducing the new art of fortification in Verona, on the orders of Francesco Maria I della Rovere, Duke of Urbino and General Governor of the Venetian Militia.

Deviating from the traditional bastion of circular or square shape, until then undisputed, Pier Francesco da Viterbo realized the triangular and pentagonal bastion. In the midst of Austrian domination, at the behest of Field Marshal Josef Radetzky, the imperial sappers worked on the military works in Verona for almost fifty years, from 1815 to 1866, carrying out an elaboration dictated by military and strategic needs, theorizing a new system, linking active defense and offensive returns, through the construction of forts outside the walled perimeter. Among the supporters of this "German-style" system was Archduke John of Habsburg-Lorraine (1782/1859), general of the militar genius and fortifications.

In execution of the project of the most illustrious Habsburg military architect, Franz Von Scholl, the modifications to the Maddalene's Bastion concerned the original upper open-air artillery positions, replaced by a second order of casemates, arranged on the sides above the original casemates.