Verona defensive system
The defensive system of Verona is a military, logistical and infrastructural complex consisting of city walls, bastions, forts, entrenched camps, warehouses and barracks, built between 1814 and 1866 during Habsburg rule, which made the Venetian city, the pivot of the so-called "Quadrilatero," one of the strong points of the Empire's strategic system. Thus Austrian Verona became an army stronghold, that is, a center that could supply the entire imperial garrison present in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, consisting of approximately 100,000 soldiers.
Monumental works forming a repertoire of nearly 2,000 years of the history of fortification art are still visible in the urban area, which is why the city has been decreed a UNESCO World Heritage Site; the ruins of the Roman fortified city, the perimeter of the Scaliger walled city with its castles, the structure of the Venetian fortress, as well as the final layout of the Habsburg stronghold still remain. The magisterial wall, in its final arrangement, has a development of more than 9 km and occupies almost 100 ha of area with its structures: curtain walls, towers, allures, bastions, moats, terrepleins and glacis. Finally, in the surrounding area, located in the flat countryside or on the Torricelle hills, 31 forts formed the last and most modern city system, which was the defense of the Habsburg stronghold.
The strengthening of the defenses was gradual, implemented in phases. From 1832 to 1842 the magisterial walls were restructured in response to the destabilization of the European political scene, which peaked in 1830 with the liberal uprisings and the July Revolution in Paris. From 1837 to 1843, hill fortifications and advanced plain forts were built, the former to prevent outflanking maneuvers to the north, the latter to solve some tactical and defensive deficiencies of the curtain wall. In 1848, the tactical importance of dominating the long natural terracing unraveling to the west of Verona highlighted by the Battle of Santa Lucia, construction of a first line of detached military forts began, which were then completed with permanent masonry works by 1856. Between 1859 and 1861, the forts of the second entrenched camp were built, at a greater distance from the city so as to render ineffective the new artilleries, which were equipped with a wider range; and finally, in 1866, this second entrenched camp was completed with two additional forts in semi-permanent style, due to the imminence of the Third Italian War of Independence.
The Austrian military buildings represent "the salient episode of art in 19th-century Verona. No other work of painting, sculpture or architecture holds a candle to the importance of the bulk and vastness of the references with the landscape and history." The Imperial Royal Office of the Fortifications of Verona proved respectful of the pre-existing communal, Scaliger and Venetian walls, integrating them into the new fortification system and renovating them according to new developments and needs in the military sphere. When confronted with the need to build new structures, on the other hand, a new approach was taken to Veronese Romanesque architecture, thus adapting the building materials, their use, as well as formal and decorative choices to the city context.
History
Beginnings and state of the fortifications
Since its founding, the city of Verona has played a prominent role as the center of connections between east and west and north and south. In particular, its location at the mouth of the Adige Valley, the main communication route between Italy and Germany, allowed those in control of this position to be able to assert themselves in the nearby Lombard and Veneto territories. As a result of this relevance due to its peculiar geographical location and its topographical and economic characteristics, as early as the Roman era Verona became a strategic, well-fortified center, the crossroads of three consular roads: the Via Claudia Augusta, which connected the Danube with the Po, the Via Postumia and the Via Gallica, which connected Aquileia with Genoa and Turin, respectively.Over the centuries, a conspicuous heritage of fortified structures was stratified, many of which are still preserved: of the pre-Roman period only limited evidence is preserved, but the vestiges of Roman domination are notable; of the medieval age, numerous works built in particular under the rule of the Della Scala family are preserved, attesting to how advanced Scala's military art was and what political weight the Veronese state managed to achieve, although there is also no lack of evidence of the brief domination of the Visconti; finally, the fortification works carried out during the Venetian period, when the imposing bastioned curtain wall surrounding the city was completed, were fundamental.
With the improvement of artillery, the defenses had to be made efficient again according to the new defensive criteria of modern-style fortifications. Thus, in 1530, the well-known Renaissance architect Michele Sanmicheli was called upon by the Venetian Republic and commissioned to rebuild the curtain wall to the right of the Adige River, as well as to carry out a general overhaul of the city's defensive system. His works remained essentially unchanged until the entire eighteenth century, as the Serenissima experienced a long period of peace that ended only with the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte, who occupied Verona in 1796. The French and the Austrians contested the city and in alternating phases tried to restore the curtain wall and build temporary field works, of which no trace remains.
Following the Treaty of Lunéville, the French withdrew to the right bank of the Adige while the other bank was ceded to the Austrians, resulting in a paradoxical situation whereby the city was split in two between enemies. However, before surrendering the left side, it was decided by the French to dismantle the defenses of the now lost part of the city, so the left Adige curtain was partly spoiled and castel San Pietro, castel San Felice and the country side tower of the Castelvecchio bridge were demolished. They then devoted themselves to tearing down the defenses of their part of the city, demolishing all the bastions except the bastion of San Francesco and the bastion of Spagna, the only ones that have thus survived in the forms given by Sanmicheli. The reason that prompted the Napoleonians to carry out these destructions was the concern that the Austrians might take possession of that part of the city by a coup d'état, establishing a dangerous bridgehead against the French armies coming from the Mincio and barring their way to Venice. Thereafter, both sides attempted to undo the damage of the reckless demolitions: in particular, the French, in late 1813, reinforced castel San Felice, Porta Vescovo, Porta San Giorgio and restored the moat of Castelvecchio, while new semi-permanent field works were prepared in the Campagnola.
In 1814 the city definitively fell to the Habsburgs: if at first the Austrians did not feel the need to strengthen the defenses, as the newly formed Holy Alliance had become the guarantor of peace in Europe, in a second phase the military assets would be restored and further strengthened, so that the city was transformed from a bastioned fortress into an entrenched camp and then into the main stronghold of the fortified region of the Quadrilatero.
Destabilization of the political framework and restructuring of the magisterial belt
As mentioned, during the years of the Conservative Order, following the Congress of Vienna, the European political situation appeared calm; in 1830, however, a new period of serious instability, culminating in the July Revolution in Paris and the liberal and revolutionary uprisings, made the Austrian Empire fear that a new conflict with France might originate. It became quite evident that the empire's security was directly linked to the defense of the eventual southern theater of war, which would take place in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia; it was a common opinion among military experts, based on previous experiences, that the lines of the Rhine and Danube were as valuable as those of the Mincio and Adige, resulting in the need to strengthen the military garrisons in Italy.The military leadership then decided that it would be necessary to fortify the large area between the Verona and Mantua territories. Moreover, the entire region, given its geographical location, had already undergone numerous fortification works in previous centuries, so it was possible for the imperial commands to take advantage of the already existing structures, renovating and reinforcing them where necessary, achieving considerable savings in time and money. In particular, the localities that best suited this rationale, and which they decided to strengthen, were Verona and Legnago on the Adige, Mantua and Peschiera on the Mincio, and Ceraino at the mouth of the Adige Valley; all locations no more than a day's march apart.
Austria decided to send General Johann Maria Philipp Frimont with a corps of troops, soon replaced by Marshal Joseph Radetzky, who arrived in Verona with a selected staff and a trained group of military engineering officers headed by General Franz von Scholl, a military engineer in charge of studying the new defensive system, who in 1832 became director of the city's fortifications. By a resolution of February 8, 1833, Emperor Francis I "deigned to decree the reestablishment of the fortifications of Verona and the Mincio line," and on February 15 the War Council in Vienna charged General von Scholl with the study and execution of these works.
Since there was no emergency, as also advised by the director general of engineers von Scholl, the in-depth study of a defensive arrangement with permanent fortifications was begun; Archduke John of Austria thus went to Verona to define with Radetzky and von Scholl the overall arrangement of the magisterial wall. The latter decided to preserve as much as possible of the pre-existing works, thus maintaining the original layout of the medieval and 16th-century city walls and integrating the ramparts that had not been destroyed. The works, which started between 1832 and 1833 and lasted a few years, were directed by von Scholl himself and Johann von Hlavaty and concerned in particular the enclosure to the right of Adige, whose strong point became the ordering to offensive returns, or to "active defense." The bastions of San Zeno, San Bernardino, Santo Spirito, Riformati and Santissima Trinità were all designed on the same planimetric and functional scheme: they were equipped with embankments on which to place the gun ports, with sloping earthen escarpments, at the foot of which the detached "Carnot wall" was built, equipped with embrasures for riflemen and close defense. Along this wall, at the level of the moat, was also placed the defensive caponier on the central point and two "earwalls" along the shoulders, recessed so as to conceal large portals from which offensive sorties could be undertaken.
The only Sanmichelian bastions that survived the French demolitions, namely those of St. Francis and Spain, were duly respected by the Austrian engineers: the modifications concerned only the earth ramparts for the new artillery emplacements in barbette, the construction of additional defenses in the talus and the opening of posterns for sorties. Equally careful attention was paid to the interventions carried out at the half bastion of the Upper Chain, where there were numerous vestiges of the communal, Scaliger, and Venetian periods: numerous additions and transformations were carried out there, but all easily distinguishable from the pre-existing structures, which were preserved. Finally, between 1837 and 1842, the Scaliger-Venetian curtain wall on the left side of the Adige was restored, in some cases with the rebuilding of some bastions and towers, and it was decided to refurbish castel San Felice, which was in a serious state of neglect at that time. Externally to the castle it was decided to add a ravelin connected to it by a protected corridor, while inside, barracks and storehouses were added.
The firepower assigned to the curtain wall turned out to be considerable, so much so that even during the War of 1866, even though the entire entrenched camp outside the city was complete and in perfect working order, the armament of the Adige right curtain reached the number of 72 guns. However, at the end of the reinforcement of the curtain walls, the tactical problem of the rideau, that is, the natural terracing extended from the built-up area of Santa Lucia and San Massimo to that of Chievo, west of the city, still remained unresolved, a line of natural emplacements against Verona from which, moreover, the enemy could have obstructed external sorties from the magisterial wall.
These works aimed to achieve the goal outlined by Radetzky, which was to convert the city of Verona into a pivot of maneuver and a depot square for the army in the countryside, from which to support defensive and counteroffensive operations in the territory between the Mincio and Adige rivers, also with the support of the strongholds of Peschiera, Mantua and, secondarily, Legnago. Despite the interventions carried out, this program was incomplete at the time, as the stronghold would still not be able to sustain a siege on its own, thus jeopardizing the imperial army's operations.