The so-called Bastione del Salice is actually a platform built to protect the port of the same name; about half of the northern wall is open, it is always considered as the most problematic since it faces the plateau and, therefore, more exposed to attacks. Described graphically in two reliefs (one is a work, and the other "beautiful") of 1547 by Gianmaria Olgiati, the imperial military engineer; the work was started about ten years earlier by the French between 1536 and 1537, which for a short time had managed to secure control of Fossano and concluded in the early months of 1542.
Repeatedly updated in the following decades, the platform is one of the oldest examples of "modern" structure in Piemonte (Piedmont). The solution adopted for the mumps, with the radius that surpasses the facade's profile as if they were two cylindrical towers added to the extremes of the bulwark; this rather closely recalls the solutions adopted by Giuliano and Antonio da Sangallo il Vecchio in the fortresses built in central Italy within second decade of the sixteenth century.
