Aosta · Italy
Tour Neuve
It is called the New Tower, and by the standards of Aosta it genuinely is: it is medieval, and therefore barely a thousand years old. It occupies the south-western corner of the circuit and was built by reinforcing the Roman structure when a stronger defence was required. The name is a small irony of time: new by comparison with what? With all the rest. In a city where the ordinary is Roman, a fourteenth-century building constitutes the novelty. It is the kind of detail that says more than a plaque: the scale of time here is not the one we are accustomed to.
Go deeper
How new is it?
Medieval: the main phase sits between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, on existing Roman structures.
Why reinforce the walls?
Because warfare had changed. The Roman walls were tall but thin by medieval standards, and the corner towers needed thickening.
Can you see the walls from here?
Yes, stretches of curtain wall still run along the nearby streets. Follow them and you can trace the perimeter of the Roman city.
Where it is
More stories in Aosta
- Adret and envers
- When the railway arrived
- Arch of Augustus
- Regional Archaeological Museum
- The villages the city swallowed
- The Battle of the Queens
- Aosta Cathedral
- Church of Santo Stefano