Fenestrelle Fort

Interesting facts

The fortress is said to have held Pierre Picaud, the real-life prisoner whose story inspired Edmond Dantès in Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo.

Besides the covered stairway, an open-air Royal Stair of about 2,500 steps climbed the slope, used by the king when he came to inspect the works.

The complex is really three forts and seven redoubts, all independent yet linked, so the fall of one would not doom the rest.

Building began at the very top, on Monte Pinaia at about 1,780 metres, so the summit works could rake any enemy attacking the lower forts.

The Fort of the Valleys at the summit is considered the last original eighteenth-century Alpine fort in Italy, the others having been demolished or modernised.

Only three women were ever held in its state prison, among them a Piedmontese marchioness and her daughter jailed as opponents of Napoleon.

Giulio Douhet, the pioneering theorist of air power, spent about a year imprisoned here in 1916 after protesting against the army general staff.

Its only real combat came in July 1944, when Italian partisans blew up part of the lowest redoubt to slow a German and Fascist offensive.

After the army left in 1946 the fort was stripped bare: doors, window frames and even the floor beams of the barracks were carried off.

Before Savoy rule the valley held the French Fort Mutin, which Savoy troops besieged and forced to surrender after about a week of bombardment in August 1708.

Why it is worth it

A single chain of bastions, barracks and batteries climbs a whole mountainside above the Chisone Valley in Piedmont, linked from bottom to top by a covered stairway of nearly 4,000 steps. Fenestrelle Fort is one of the largest fortifications in Europe: its works spread over about 130 hectares and climb from roughly 1,100 to some 1,800 metres above sea level, joined by a continuous wall about 3 km long.

The valley passed to the House of Savoy in 1709, and the fort was built to bar the route from France towards Turin. Work began in 1728 to designs by the military engineer Ignazio Bertola and continued, with interruptions, until 1850; later engineers of the Savoy state completed and extended his plan. Rather than one fortress, Fenestrelle is a series of separate forts and redoubts stacked up the slope and tied together by the stairway and walls, so that each level could cover the one below. Seen from the valley floor, the stepped line of masonry running up the green ridge looks almost like a mountain version of a great defensive wall.

The fort never faced the major siege it was built for, but it served for long periods as a state prison. In the Napoleonic era the French held notable prisoners here, among them Cardinal Bartolomeo Pacca, and after Italian unification it confined soldiers and political detainees, including the Archbishop of Turin, Luigi Fransoni. In 1999 the fort was chosen as the symbol of the Province of Turin. The village of Fenestrelle lies at its foot, on the road that climbs the Val Chisone from Pinerolo towards Sestriere.

Getting there

The fort rises above the village of Fenestrelle, about 27 km from Pinerolo, up the Chisone Valley. Turin Airport (TRN) is about 50 km away in a straight line.

From the encyclopaedia

The Fenestrelle Fortress, better known as the Fenestrelle Fort is a fortress overlooking Fenestrelle. It is the symbol of the Metropolitan City of Turin, Piedmont, northern Italy. It is the biggest alpine fortification in Europe, having a surface area of 130 hectares. The fortress, built by Savoy between 1728 and 1850 under the design of the architect Ignazio Bertola, guards the access to Turin via the Chisone valley and stands at altitudes between 1,100 and 1,800 m. The territory was acquired in 1709 by the Duchy of Savoy after the defeat of the French at Fort Mutin (Fenestrelle).

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Fenestrelle Fort

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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From the encyclopaedia