The walls of Montagnana are among the best preserved in Europe, but the interesting thing is not the postcard: it is how they were meant to work. The present circuit is of the middle of the fourteenth century, when the Carraresi, lords of Padua, wanted to strengthen this frontier stronghold against the Verona of the Scaligeri, which held nearby Legnago. It is an irregular quadrilateral of about six hundred metres by three hundred, twenty-four hectares, a perimeter of two kilometres, with twenty-four towers spaced some sixty metres apart and between seventeen and nineteen metres high; the walls reach eight metres, are about a metre thick and are crowned with Guelph merlons, between which wooden fans sheltered the defenders. Under the arches of the wall-walk stood the canipe, the storerooms where the goods produced in the countryside were kept; and all around the walls, on the inner side, a strip was left free of buildings and cultivated as a pomerium, to hold out through long sieges. Outside, the ditch was flooded with water from the Frassine.
The town, in short, was born as everyone's refuge, and everyone had to pay for it. Montagnana is named as a castrum in a document of 996; the early medieval defences were made of earthworks, palisades, ditches and barriers of thorny plants, and the inhabitants of the surrounding villages were bound to the maintenance of walls, bretèches and bridge and to military service towards the castrum, considered the common refuge, of vital importance for the safety of all. In 1242 Ezzelino III da Romano took and burned the town, then fortified it: the keep of the castle of San Zeno is attributed to him. The name comes from Motta Aeniana: in medieval Latin «motta» was a small rise and «aeniana» a mansio. Inside the walls, moreover, there is a town: the cathedral of 1431 keeps a Transfiguration by Paolo Veronese and, beside the entrance, a Judith and a David recently attributed to Giorgione; palazzo Magnavin-Foratti is said to have been the house of Jacopa, wife of the condottiero Erasmo da Narni known as the Gattamelata; the town hall is attributed to Michele Sanmicheli; and just outside porta Padova stands villa Pisani, one of Palladio's masterpieces.
