The video made by the Civic Museums and Digitalismi, a Pisan group of experts in digital culture, helps us reconstruct the history of the city's most imposing building, a witness to conflicts and transformations from its foundation in 1261 to the present day.
The thirteenth-century fortress, reconstructed with new technologies, putting to use knowledge gained in past excavations and studies, appears to us very different from the present fortress, the corner towers are square and not cylindrical, other towers existed in the middle of the curtains in addition to another where the main entrance opened, the whole structure then appeared taller and slimmer. Flying over the thirteenth-century city we appreciate the size of the historic center, identical to the present, we encounter the streets, squares, the town hall, religious buildings, until we widen our gaze to the hill, with its castles and the plain, rich in fields and water.
But it was in the second half of the 15th century that the fortress was completely transformed to defend the fortifications from new and powerful enemy artillery. The new lords of Imola, the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza and after him Girolamo Riario would be willing to invest significant resources.
It is in this phase that the fortress takes on the appearance it still largely retains, the old towers with a quadrangular base are incorporated into the new circular towers, the perimeter walls are strengthened, the entrances are moved and are protected by external ravelins connected to the fortress and the mainland by drawbridges. All this and more we can grasp in the reconstruction, such as the evocative presence of the water that filled the moats, the presence of the city walls, demolished in the early twentieth century, and the presence of the turreted revetments, elements that have disappeared but are important for grasping the historical reality of the building.