Austere, built in the same brown colour of the rocks, it rises up on a rocky spur at the confluence of the river Magra with the Aulella.
The fortress is marked by a military architecture suitable to sustain the firearm attack.
On two sides it is defended by powerful walls, on the other two sides by the impracticable slope of the spur.

Through a brick bridge, once a drawbridge, across narrow passages you reach the central donjon, in the past inhabited by the garrison and now base of a very interesting museum of natural history of the Lunigiana.
Form its top you can get a bird’s eye view of the whole valley from the Apennines to the Alpi Apuane.

A short history:
The commissioner of the building is uncertain: maybe at the end of 15th century the lord of Aulla Jacopo Ambrogio Malaspina or at the beginning of 16th century Giovanni dalle Bande Nere or Adamo Centurione, the Genoese business man who purchased the feud of Aulla in 1543.
Taken at the end of 19th century by the Bourbon troops, around 1860 took place a private sale and in 1916 it was sold to the Waterfield family.
Lina Waterfield, together with her husband, the painter Aubrey Waterfield (died in 1944) restored the fortress that became their residence in Lunigiana. She transformed the fortress in hanging gardens (now quite lost) and planted a holm oak wood on the hill.
In 1977 the fortress was acquired by the Italian state and remised it to the town of Aulla that used it as museum.

A few notes on Aulla:
The town dates back to 884, the foundation year of the Abbey of San Caprasio,
Due to the air raids of the last world war (Aulla was an important railway) the medieval part of the village was almost completely destroyed.

For more info:
wikipedia: fortezza della Brunella
www.sigeric.it: Brunella fortress