City Walls

The village of Barbara is made up of two parts: the Castle, or the 13th-century fortified centre surrounded by a fortified perimeter and delimited to the south by Porta Roma and to the north by the gate of the arch of Santa Barbara, and the Village, or the medieval town which extends from the gate of the arch of Santa Barbara onto a slope or flat towards the neoclassical church of the Assumption. The Castle, renovated in the fifteenth century, is still surrounded by a sloping wall, equipped with four corner fortifications and culminating in an imposing raised keep, currently known as “‘l Torrione”. The two small towers on the north side, those overlooking Via Castelfidardo, are essentially intact and still feature the artillery emplacement, battlements, or gun ports for culverins or arquebuses. The tall tower to the right of Porta Roma was rebuilt in the 1960s on the site of a previous 15th-century tower that was destroyed by bombing during World War II. The base of a fourth tower house is visible, located between the gate of the arch of Santa Barbara and Via delle Mura.