defensive system

During the Modern Age we witnessed the birth, consolidation and decline of great powers that dragged numerous political and religious conflicts with them. The Mediterranean Sea, as area of contact between the most distant Empires, experienced an era of intense naval activity in the form of piracy, race wars and armed deterrence, spreading along its shores with coastal watch towers.

The objective of this research is regarding the construction techniques used in the military architecture of Cittadella-Fortezza (Ancona, Marche, Italy). In this case, attention will focus primarily on historical, bibliographic and archive research, then through a comprehensive analysis of building methods used in the sixteenth century and on the strategic function that this fortification covered in the coastal strip of the Middle Adriatic.

Starting from the sixteenth century, the coastal landscape of Sardinia suffered deep transformations related to the construction of defensive structures to protect the inhabitants of the towns and land resources. Coastal towers and fortresses are the most evident signs of these interventions. This paper aims to reconstruct these processes through archival and cartographic documents produced between the second half of the sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth century.