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The military architecture of the later fourteenth century is dominated by the emergence of a new type of fortified palace or palatial fortress. It consists of an isolated, more or less compact symmetrical block, enclosing a rectangular courtyard and reinforced by corner towers. In flat country it was normally surrounded by a moat; in the hills a stepped-up platform provided a preliminary obstacle. It is this basic pattern which is developed in innumerable fifteenth-century castles throughout North and Central Italy.
The major fortress, dominating the town of Spoleto, was carried out for Cardinal Albornoz by Gattapone, who is documented as working on it intermittently from 1362 to 1370. Apart from a distant outer circle of wall, it constitutes a completely regular, six-towered, double rectangle. The 230 m long and 80 m high Ponte delle Torri carries water to the castle and the upper town. Its gently pointed arches are a monument to later-fourteenth-century civil engineering. Gattapone's possible connection with the aqueduct is not clear.
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