The historical sources report that in the XII and XIII centuries;the fortified town of Civitella;built in order to control the surrounding valleys;was already a strategic point for the border of the reign.The town-walls were probably enlarged by Alfonse of Aragon at the end of the fifteenth century and at the beginning of the sixteenth Bernardo Buontalenti;in order to adapt the fortress to the changed defensive needs;added to its structure five circular ramparts and a pentagonal one.The real fortress on the top of the mountain extends for more than five hundred meters on the rocky ridge and covers a surface of 25;000 square meters.The present structure;restored in the Seventies of the last century;was built by order of the king of Spain Philip II of Habsburg in the second half of the sixteenth century and replaced the previous fort.The nineteenth-century tactical adjustments made the fortress strong enough to be the last bulwark against the Piedmontese siege in 1860-61.In 1988 the Museum of the Fortress was founded and situated in a few rooms of the building;which had previously functioned as an artillery depot.It exhibits a collections of arms and cannons dating from the Renaissance to the two big battles of the nineteenth century;in 1806 and 1860.