The tour revealing the Palmanova “war machine” and its history starts at the Porta Cividale, now the home of the Historical Military Museum. Porta Cividale is just one of the three doors to the fortress town ; Porta Udine and Porta Marittima (now, Porta Aquileia). Seeing the plans of the roadways helps us to appreciate the defence system and the function of control that the door itself held in relation to the flow of comings and goings from the town.

Today you can still see the larch wood bolted wings in their original position, whereas the heavy iron gates are now situated in the square by the loggia of the “Gran Guardia” (the Grand Guard). The gates were locked at night and opened again early in the morning. Beneath the door there is a hall for the guards and fireplaces which were used by the infantrymen on guard duty both for cooking and for heating on the cold winter days.

Besides the officers and the Health Constable, who had to control the goods in transit and the people entering the town, who were quartered in small rooms. There also was a big wheel (only visible on Porta Udine) and the machinery to lift the drawbridge in front of the external arch of the entrance.

From the ground floor you cannot reach the first floor, for security reasons. Once you go up to the first floor, through a flight of cobbled paving, you reach the Dongione where the mementos of the Military Museum are displayed.

Through a part of the curtain, you go up to the Cavaliere, from where the artillery could control both inside the fortification system and the countryside around. You can see the rivellino at the front, now cut in two by the road which leads into the fortress. On the left, in the foreground , there is the rampart. Farther away there is the Napoleonic lunette with its supporting buildings.

When you descend the cavaliere you pass near the first blind loggia with its façade made of stone, near mounds of earth which appear to be of natural origin, but are in fact ingenuous devices designed by brilliant military-minded architects each one having a specific defensive aim. You arrive at the great loggia through the sortie.

Inside you can still find the big fireplace for the guards living in it, these guards were the sentinels of the line of walls. You go down through the sortie tunnel at moat level, there you can walk protected fom the enemy by the falsabraga to your right, you enter the short tunnel that crosses the falsabraga itself. You are now in the moat. You cross a small bridge over the drain and you climb the rivellino with its supply of gunpowder.

If you go round the rivellino you reach the level of the countryside, this has been shaped by skilful hands and you can see the high wall of white stones of the lunette and the structure of the central field fortification.
Once you enter the field fortification you can appreciate the play of slits for the fusiliers and small pieces of artillery, then you can go up to the first floor via a small staircase/ladder, which was once removable being withdrawn in the event of danger.

From here you can secretly descend through a staircase made of stones, to the bowels of the earth, and take a tunnel lit by the staff of the Military Museum, then you can reach the moat escaping in this way from an imaginary enemy who hypothetically besiege us. Now turning to the left, always walking very close to the wall of the counterscarp, we feel the height and the power of the rampart .

After crossing the bridge over the ditch, again On the right there is a foot path which follows the extremities of the two ramparts and the curtains which lead to the arches of an elegant aqueduct and then you enter the town again through Porta Udine.