In 1848, the tactical importance of dominating the long natural terracing unraveling to the west of Verona highlighted by the Battle of Santa Lucia, construction of a first line of detached military forts began, which were then completed with permanent masonry works by 1856.

Thus, in 1530, the well-known Renaissance architect Michele Sanmicheli was called upon by the Venetian Republic and commissioned to rebuild the curtain wall to the right of the Adige River, as well as to carry out a general overhaul of the city's defensive system.

The reason that prompted the Napoleonians to carry out these destructions was the concern that the Austrians might take possession of that part of the city by a coup d'état, establishing a dangerous bridgehead against the French armies coming from the Mincio and barring their way to Venice.

[15] As mentioned, during the years of the Conservative Order, following the Congress of Vienna, the European political situation appeared calm; in 1830, however, a new period of serious instability, culminating in the July Revolution in Paris and the liberal and revolutionary uprisings, made the Austrian Empire fear that a new conflict with France might originate.

Moreover, the entire region, given its geographical location, had already undergone numerous fortification works in previous centuries, so it was possible for the imperial commands to take advantage of the already existing structures, renovating and reinforcing them where necessary, achieving considerable savings in time and money.

[16][20][21] The only Sanmichelian bastions that survived the French demolitions, namely those of St. Francis and Spain, were duly respected by the Austrian engineers: the modifications concerned only the earth ramparts for the new artillery emplacements in barbette, the construction of additional defenses in the talus and the opening of posterns for sorties.

Finally, between 1837 and 1842, the Scaliger-Venetian curtain wall on the left side of the Adige was restored, in some cases with the rebuilding of some bastions and towers, and it was decided to refurbish castel San Felice, which was in a serious state of neglect at that time.

[16] In order to give Verona the ability to withstand a siege and thus make it suitable for guarding the army's resources, Franz von Scholl felt the need to provide the city with an additional fortification extension with detached works.

Moreover, based on the eighteenth-century theories developed by Marc René de Montalembert and taking his cue from earlier Swedish artillery towers (built between 1689 and 1731), he worked out an original model of a fortification with a circular layout, integrated with an advanced polygonal enclosure.

On the left side of the Adige River, the construction of military works was required to make compatible the presence of the new monumental cemetery, built in front of the enclosure at the Campo Marzo bastion starting in 1828.

[16][28] Von Scholl is considered the most eminent military architect of the Austrian Empire, as he had, with an eclectic spirit, experimented with new systems of fortification in Verona, adapting them to the site, to the terrain of implantation, in accordance with the pre-existing magistral walls.

In the end, the idea of suspending further development prevailed, thus leaving a city well defended (partly due to favorable morphology) to the north and west, but with several weak points to the south and east, i.e., on the very sides that would be attacked by the Piedmontese during the first Italian War of Independence.

[29][30] Immediately after the battle, on May 15, 1848, Radetzky then ordered the construction of seven redoubts (of ground only) to be placed to the right of the Adige, along the edge of the rideau, the arched natural terracing overlooking the esplanade ahead of the Venetian city.

Between 1854 and 1856, on the left bank, the entrenched camp was completed by Fort San Michele, near Madonna di Campagna, straddling the road to Vicenza, and the field post attached to the medieval castle of Montorio Veronese.

[30] On the right of the Adige, the eleven new forts were between 800/1000 m and 2300/2400 m away from the magistral wall, according to the position forced by the natural line of the rideau and the new railroads to Venice and Brescia, to Mantua, and later to Trentino; the interval between one and the other measured 800/1000 m on average.

[30] The forts of the first entrenched camp also belong, like those designed by von Scholl, to the new mixed polygonal system of the Neo-German fortification school, which was tested after 1820 at the sites of the federal strongholds, on the Rhine and the Danube.

[32] The Quadrilateral fortifications were coordinated in a larger system extending from Venice, an imposing land and sea stronghold, to Rovigo, a formidable offensive bridgehead on the lower Adige River, characterized by the presence of four forts built between 1862 and 1863.

These fortifying extensions were a prelude to the final expansion of the entrenched camp with a new, more advanced line of detached forts, in order to remove the body of the square, with its fundamental military establishments, factories and barracks, as well as the civilian community itself, from artillery bombardment.

[32] In the spring of 1860 Archduke Leopold, inspector general of engineering, presided in Verona over the commission assembled to determine the layout of the new detached forts, which were to form the most advanced line of the entrenched camp.

[32] In the plan outlined by Archduke Leopold, with the director of engineering and the artillery commander, Verona reached its maximum extent as a fortified city, at the end of a long evolution that had lasted nearly two thousand years.

[34] On April 22, 1866, a few days after the conclusion of the alliance between Prussia and the newly formed Kingdom of Italy, the engineer detachment at the army high command decreed in Verona the preparation of the state of defense in all the strongholds of the Veneto region.

The plans were drawn up with extraordinary celerity by Tunkler, who in the second half of the nineteenth century was considered one of the most distinguished practitioners of the Corps of Engineers in Europe, not least because of his considerable scientific and technical activity as a treatise writer on fortifications, at the Habsburg Academy in Kloster Bruck.

[3][38] Between the mid-1830s and 1866, a plan for the gradual insertion of military buildings and establishments, intended for the various activities and logistical needs of the Habsburg army, was implemented in the urban core of Verona because of the strategic function that Field Marshal Radetzky had assigned to the city.

The results obtained are due to the workers of the Imperial Royal Office of the Fortifications of Verona, cultured designers who were trained for the most part at the Genie Akademie in Vienna: they showed themselves to be attentive to grasping the peculiarities of the place in which they worked, as well as connoisseurs of medieval and Renaissance Veronese architecture, whose qualities they understood.

[44] In the architecture of the nineteenth-century barracks, the high technical and artistic level of the design of the Habsburg officials can be recognized: attentive to functionality, to the salubriousness of the interiors, and to the right economy in construction, they nevertheless succeeded in asserting a monumental figurative character, of civilian representation, with solutions inferred from the stylistic orientations proper to the time.

In the imminence of a conflict, however, the powders contained in them had to be transferred inside the fortified city, to the wartime magazines; these were then covered with a bomb-proof vaulted structure, that is, one capable of resisting enemy artillery strikes in the event of siege or bombardment.

A second pyrotechnic laboratory was located southeast of the military hospital, a short distance from the bastions of Santo Spirito and Riformati, where, within a large enclosed area, the loading of mine cartridges and artillery cartouches took place.

Within a few years, places of entertainment increased considerably in number, in a far greater proportion than the growth of the civilian population: from 1822 to 1861, distilleries, cafes, taverns, inns, hotels and billiard halls grew from 466 to 559 establishments.

This entailed a number of restrictions, including: a ban on approaching fortified works; limits on transit on some military roads; and the impossibility of building or planting tall trees in the so-called "esplanade," a large area used for militia exercises.

There could, however, be exceptions to the latter limitation; in particular, it was possible to plant vines consisting of trees with a maximum height of 120 cm, and in the case of repeated requests, following inspections by the Engineer Corps, building permits could be granted.