Quart Towers: The Napoleonic Cannonball Fortress
Why is it significant?
Gaze up at the sheer, semicircular stone walls of the Quart Towers and notice the countless deep impact craters pockmarking their massive limestone masonry.
Key Facts
| Place | Quart Towers: The Napoleonic Cannonball Fortress |
|---|---|
| Address | Plaça de Santa Úrsula, 1, 46008 València, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 39.47560, -0.38380 |
| Part of Walk | Valencia Old Town: The Silk Exchange, Medieval Towers, and Holy Grail Cathedral |
| Generated | Generated |
Gaze up at the sheer, semicircular stone walls of the Quart Towers and notice the countless deep impact craters pockmarking their massive limestone masonry. Constructed between 1441 and 1460 by master architects Pere Bonfill and Francesc Baldomar, this majestic late-Gothic gateway defended the western approach to Valencia along the royal road to Madrid and the village of Quart de Poblet. Drawing direct architectural inspiration from the monumental Castel Nuovo in Naples, Bonfill sculpted two colossal cylindrical towers connected by a central machicolated curtain wall of breathtaking proportion and strength.
The dozens of jagged craters and shattered stones you see embedded in the western facade are not damage from erosion; they are genuine scars from heavy artillery cannonballs fired in June 1808 during the Peninsular War. The French Napoleonic army, commanded by Marshal Bon-Adrien Jeannot de Moncey, subjected the towers to a ferocious twenty-four-hour bombardment. However, local Valencian militia and volunteer citizens held the fortress with indomitable courage, forcing the imperial French forces into a humiliating retreat.
Like their sister towers at Serranos, the Quart Towers are completely open at the back, exposing vaulted stone chambers that served as a women's penitentiary in the seventeenth century and later as a military prison for rebel soldiers. From the battlements at thirty-four meters high, you can take in a panoramic view across the red-tiled roofs of the historic center toward the western orange groves.
Run your fingers inside the deep impact craters located near chest height on the outer bastions: several still hold rusted iron fragments of authentic French artillery cannonballs wedged stubbornly into the limestone, physical relics of the desperate hand-to-hand combat fought by citizens to defend their city against Napoleon's forces.
Retrace your steps eastward along Calle de Quart to enter the breathtaking frescoed interior of San Nicolás Church.