Forte Montecchio Nord

Carved into a rocky hill above Colico's lakefront, Forte Montecchio Nord still holds the four Schneider guns it received before the First World War. Rotating steel cupolas, rock-cut galleries and granite-faced concrete survived both wars; the guns saw action in April 1945.

Why it matters

Most Great War fortifications were stripped, shelled or modernised out of recognition. This one was completed in 1914, never fought the war it was built for, and therefore kept its original armour: it retains its original armament and is among Europe’s best-preserved forts of the period. The fort occupies a strategic hill above Colico where Lake Como meets the Valtellina and Chiavenna valleys. The gun mountings and position above the valley mouths reveal the fort’s defensive purpose. The fort is run by the Museo della Guerra Bianca, which also manages the nearby Forte di Fuentes.

What to notice

The fort includes barracks, officers’ quarters, an armoury, galleries and an armoured battery, much of it underground: rock-cut galleries connect spaces built with concrete and stone. In the battery, four Schneider guns of 149-millimetre calibre sit in rotating steel cupolas, each able to lay roughly fourteen-kilometre fire across the valley mouths. Its protective engineering included: reinforced-concrete walls up to two metres thick, faced with hand-worked granite from San Fedelino, a powder magazine driven more than sixty metres into the hill, and a connecting gallery fitted with ten downward-sloping loopholes against infantry attack. Cisterns, filters and pipework made the fort self-sufficient in water. A hand-painted situation map remains on the wall of the operations room.

Context and history

Plans to defend this part of the lake predate the fort; early designs date to 1862. Nothing was built until the strategic picture changed — in January 1911 the army's defence office planned a fortified line for the Swiss border salient, the armoured battery on Montecchio Nord was approved that year, funding followed in 1912, the works began in 1913, and they were finished in little more than a year, by 1914. The frontier then moved away from the fighting fronts, and the fortress spent the Great War on alert without firing. In 1939 it was dedicated to Aldo Lusardi, a gold-medal officer. The Second World War brought German and Italian troops to garrison it during the occupation years, and on 27 April 1945 partisans turned the guns on a retreating Italo-German column moving along the lakeside road toward Switzerland, in the confused final days after Mussolini's party had been captured near Dongo. Peace left the fort abandoned until restoration and the Museo della Guerra Bianca's management returned it to visitors.