Given its strategic position - with control over all transit - the Rock of Bard must have been fortified even before the coming of the Romans; documented testimony is however of a much later date. According to some historians, this was where the Ostrogoth king, Theodoric installed his garrison (clusurae Augustanae) in the early 6th century. The first written records of a fortified settlement here date back to 1034, when it belonged to Boso, the Viscount of Aosta, whose descendants held the lordship of Bard up to the early 13th century. It was conquered by Amedeo IV of Savoy in 1242 and thenceforth, the castle became part of the dominions of Savoy. A late 16th-century drawing depicts the ancient structure as a cluster of edifices dominated by a square keep and enclosed by a double set of curtain walls with watchtowers; a system of bastions stretched right down to the village. In 1661, Duke Carlo Emanuele II had all the artillery in the strongholds of Verrès and Montjovet dismantled and transferred to Bard, which was to become the garrisoned praesidium of the savoyard forces in the Aosta Valley. Records dating to the 17th and 18th centuries report various interventions to extend and strengthen the defensive structures of the fortress.

From the castle
to the fortress