How Monselice was built and evolved over time

Monselice is built out of its own hill. The Euganean Hills are volcanic, formed in two phases, and the second — an episode of viscous magma — laid down the trachyte that was quarried here for centuries. The Roman name, Mons Silicis, the mountain of flintstone, probably comes from those quarries.

The keep on the Rocca summit shows the material plainly: it is a tower of regular trachyte blocks taken from the local quarries. The same stone paved streets well beyond the town.

The defences were built in stages rather than at once. Ezzelino III da Romano closed the walls into a complete circuit around the inhabited centre in the thirteenth century and rebuilt the keep above it; under the Carraresi in the fourteenth they reached their final shape — one outer circuit with towers and monumental gates, and four inner circuits climbing the Rocca to the tower on the summit. Parts of all five are still visible.