Torre Aquila

At the edge of Trento's castle rises a tower that once guarded the road toward the Valsugana. Painted around 1400 for a prince-bishop, its walls carry eleven surviving panels of peasant labour and noble leisure through the working year, an outstanding expression of International Gothic.

Why it matters

Torre Aquila contains the Cycle of the Months, a fresco narrative painted around the hall of a fortified tower. The cycle is an outstanding example of International Gothic painting. The tower also preserves a chapter of Trento's urban history: an old city gate tower incorporated into the residence of the prince-bishops.

What to notice

• The eleven surviving panels of the Cycle of the Months. March is lost; the remaining months show farm work, hunts, courtly games and landscapes that shift with the seasons, documenting the feudal world at the close of the Middle Ages.

• The painter is often identified as Venceslao in municipal accounts; the castle describes him as an artist of Bohemian origin.
• A wooden spiral staircase connects the tower's three floors.
• On the walkway along the city walls, the Torre del Falco: sixteenth-century hunting scenes and open-air pastimes frescoed for prince-bishop Bernardo Cles by a painter of northern training, including a recognizable view of Salzburg and its fortress.

Context and history

A document of 1290 records the tower above the city gate linking Trento with the Valsugana. After his election in 1390, prince-bishop Georg von Liechtenstein took it from the city, connected it to the castle by a covered passage and made it a residence; the present three-storey form dates from that period. Around 1400 he commissioned an artist of Bohemian origin to paint the Cycle of the Months in the middle hall. The frescoes survived later reuse, including the castle's long spell as barracks after 1803.