1.   If the first glimpse of fortress towns like Avila and Segovia is the most exciting, it hardly exhausts their storybook appeal.

2.   It was a sentiment expressed even more forcefully in Monteriggioni, a ancient fortress town near Siena.

3.   In this medieval fortress town, Ahmed and a colleague sat with an Associated Press reporter and TV cameraman on Sunday, arming and disarming six types of mines.

4.   It worries investors, has slowed the growth of tourism and turned neighborhoods into fortress towns of walls, razor wire, electronic gates and panic buttons.