Il Forte di Bardi is located in the mountains of the Valle d'Aosta. Its history is now centuries old. Built on the banks of the Dora Baltea in the XNUMXth century during the time of Theodoric, the Fort developed a lot during the Middle Ages. It was defined "impregnable oppidumFor its defensive strength and its position. In the middle of the XNUMXth century the Bard dynasty passed away and the complex ended in the hands of the Savoy princes.
During the modern era, real battles marked the fate of our peninsula and the complex. At the beginning of the XNUMXth century, during the War of the Spanish Succession, the Fort was the scene of one of the greatest armed resistances of the House of Savoy. Vittorio Amedeo II managed to block the descent of the French into Italy.
Napoleon stopped at the Forte di Bard
In May 1800, the most famous episode in the whole history of the Forte di Bard. Under the directives of Captain Stockard von Bernkopf, the Fort found itself having to face the arrival of the French army at dawn on May 14th. 40 thousand soldiers who anticipated the arrival of Napoleon, on his way to Italy for his campaign of conquest.
Strenuously resisting the attacks and forcing the French to deviate to overcome the obstacle constituted by the fort, Captain Stockard von Bernkopf managed to resist the siege of the Napoleonic troops until XNUMX June of that year, signing an honorable surrender.
After such resistance, however, Napoleon Bonaparte chose to have the fort razed to the ground. In this way, no one could have prevented its passage in the years to come.
The reconstruction of the contemporary era
Thirty years after the Napoleonic story, house of Savoy he chose to rebuild the Fort to defend himself from possible attacks by the French. The reconstruction took eight years, with the military engineer Francesco Antonio Olivero in charge of a mammoth project. The latter opted for the construction of different buildings arranged on different floors. Lower down, on two distinct levels and designed in the shape of a pincer, theOpera Ferdinand andOpera Mortars; in the central part, theOpera Vittorio; higher up, theWork Gorge andOpera Carlo Alberto.
Despite the 283 rooms and 176 service rooms, the Fort was abandoned during the XNUMXth century, only to be used by the Italian Army during the world wars as a military prison and powder magazine.
In the nineties of the last century it was acquired by the autonomous region of Valle d'Aosta, which from 2000 to 2006 started a reconstruction and conservation work aimed at reopening the complex to the public.
The Avengers and contemporary exhibitions
Today the Forte di Bard is used for various activities: in addition to temporary exhibitions of ancient, modern and contemporary art, it occasionally hosts photographic exhibitions, completing everything with itineraries built ad hoc for the complex. There are three paths in question: The museum of the Alps, Children's Alps e The prisons, as well as a quarter in progress (The Fort museum).
Among the curiosities relating to the Forte di Bard, the one linked to theMarvel universe. The Avengers: Age of Ultron and part of the hugely successful saga starring the super-heroes created by Stan Lee on comics and the Bard Fortress was chosen as the film's opening location. Home to the infamous HYDRA organization, Bard Fortress is attacked by the Avengers in the opening scene, where the heroes find themselves in the fictional European nation of Sokovia.
Photo source: Facebook Forte di Bard
