The Rocca Roveresca houses an important armoury with defensive and offensive weapons from the 15th to the 18th century. An early Renaissance building, as commissioned by the great military architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini, had a formidable military apparatus for active and passive defence.
The Rocca’s armament consisted mainly of artillery and the individual equipment of the armed corps that defended it. The current composition of the Armoury reflects, in general terms, what the selection of collective and individual weapons of the time might have been.
On display are medium-calibre artillery such as bombards, but also semi-portable artillery such as pushers and stationary arquebuses. Among the bladed weapons, examples of inlaid weapons stand out, some of them important, such as ronconi, corsesche, halberds, partisans, spiedi, spikes, breach and fortress spikes and pikes. Swords and daggers, together with maces of various types, complete the range of offensive bladed weapons.
Among the white defensive weapons, or armour, a vast typology of helmets constitutes a unique completion of what constituted the defence equipment of the man-at-arms in ancient times.
“Beards and knight’s helmets, pouches and morions, arquebusier’s pouches, all testify to the technological diversification of the main defensive material. Armour of various types serves as a term of comparison in relation to the changing requirements of warfare, in connection with the development of artillery.
The individual parts of armour are also the object of study for the visitor, as are the horse and rider accessories (stirrups, spurs, bits). Iconographic sources complete the first stage of arming the fortress, now embellished with authentic finds.
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