The wall belt, built between 1488 and 1508, strongly influenced the city structure. The only traces of the walls surviving today are some small wall sections and the 13th century Torre Civica (City Tower), now part of the Palazzo Comunale, the city's town hall.
The Soncino old town centre is completely enclosed within a wall belt, two kilometres long, reinforced with towers and a moat, that connects with the 15th century Rocca Sforzesca, regarded as one of the most important military fortifications of Lombardy, built to defend the river Oglio.
The residential area of Pizzighettone too is enclosed within a system of fortifications, widely regarded as one of the best preserved of Northern Italy. Pizzighettone stands beside the river Adda and its walls have a perimeter of more than 5 km. The visit to the fortifications includes a visit to the casemates, a series of large buildings covered by vaults and a walk along all of the perimeter with the doors, the ravelling, the remains of the stronghold and the prisons. The Torre del Guado tower is particularly important because there, in 1525, the King of France, Francis I was imprisoned.
The three towns, Crema, Soncino and Pizzighettone are connected by a cycling track which runs almost entirely across protected natural areas.
The majestic castle Castello Visconteo in Pandino, whose building was ordered by Bernabò Visconti still today impresses the visitors with its amazing "fortified palace" look. The building is square, with strong, massive defence towers but in the inside it has airy and elegant porticos, still massively decorated with 14th century paintings. It is one of the many castle-mansions that decorate the landscape and many of the towns on the Northwest/Southeast axis in the Cremona Province with their massive presence.
In the centre of the town of S. Giovanni in Croce stands the massive Villa Medici del Vascello, built in 1407 as a defence stronghold by Cabrino Fondulo, lord of Cremona, and later transformed in an elegant mansion by Cecilia Gallerani, the well known Lady with an Ermine painted by Leonardo Da Vinci.
A bit further away, in Casteldidone, Villa Mina della Scala, now renamed Villa Douglas Scotti, is a peculiar noble mansion shaped like a towered castle, was built at the end of the 16th century and expanded later on.
In Romprezzagno, a hamlet of Tornata, the tiny residential area develops around Cascina Bellotti, a building of medieval origin, rebuilt in the shape of a castle in 1465 and later on transformed in a building for agricultural purposes. This building is a token of the power that the family of local lord could exercise because of the massive extent of the estate they owned.
Other areas of the Cremona territory feature a type of quite common fortification built for centuries to defend water-rich and very fertile lands. This is the case for the area around Castelverde, where many buildings devoted to residential and agricultural use still bear the sings of the original fortification: Villa Schinchinelli in Cavallara, Villa Sommi Picenardi in Licengo and Villa Vernazzi in Ossalengo. In addition to these areas there is also the castle in Breda de’ Bugni, with two fortified towers and a spacious, airy 17th century courtyard.
The Cascina Mancapane in S. Martino in Beliseto features a facade built at the beginning of the 19th century with a late medieval Spanish style, in tune with the medieval revival trend quite common in the Cremona area at that times, a revival that led to the building, thanks to the work of Luigi Voghera, of Villa Sommi Picenardi in Torre Picenardi and of the Castle, one of the most important examples of eclectic architecture, in S. Lorenzo Picenardi.