Discover Castello Scaligero di Soave

The castle is built up the hill in three successive courtyards, each higher and more defensible than the last, ending at the keep on the summit.

The masonry is brick and local stone, with Ghibelline swallowtail merlons -- the Scaligeri, like the Visconti, were of the imperial party, and the merlon shape declares it.

The first courtyard is the largest and was where the garrison and its horses were kept. The second is smaller and tighter. The third gives onto the keep, which is the oldest fabric on the site.

Two arms of the town wall run down the hillside from the castle to enclose Soave below, making castle and town a single continuous fortification -- the feature that distinguishes this from an ordinary hill castle.

The nineteenth-century restoration added roofs, timber floors, staircases and furnishings. It is well done and clearly of its period; the walls beneath it are the fourteenth-century work.