Rocca dei Tempesta

The Rocca dei Tempesta is a moated medieval fortress standing on its own island of water in the middle of Noale, and it is one of the more unexpected sights on the Veneto plain.

What survives is the enclosure -- a polygonal brick wall with corner towers and a keep, entirely surrounded by a broad moat fed from the Marzenego. The buildings inside are gone, which is what makes the plan so easy to read.

It is named for the Tempesta family, who held Noale from the twelfth century until Venice took the town in 1339. Today it is a public park, used for concerts and open-air cinema through the summer.

The Rocca is fragile brick masonry standing in water, and it is being conserved continuously. Do not climb the walls or the towers, and keep to the paths inside the enclosure.

The moat is deep and its edges are not fenced everywhere -- something to keep in mind with children.

Noale has no tourism economy, and the useful thing a visitor does here is spend a little in the town: the cafés under the arcades in Piazza Castello, or the weekly market.

The town is flat and the station is a short walk away, so arriving by train rather than car is genuinely easy here -- which is not true of most places in this region.

The Rocca is a public park: free to enter, open through the day, with hours that extend in summer for events.

It stands in the middle of Noale, a two-minute walk from Piazza Castello and about ten minutes from the Noale-Scorzè railway station.

Allow half an hour to walk the enclosure and the moat, longer if you sit. The ground inside is grass and gravel and mostly level, and the outer circuit of the moat is level and accessible; the towers are not open to climb.

The summer programme of concerts and cinema is worth checking -- it is the only time the interior is used as something other than a park.