The Four Openings
Quattro Partimenti
Every attack lands somewhere. Every defense covers something.
Fencing vocabulary without a system for describing the body quickly becomes imprecise. "He hit me" tells you nothing useful. "He took the upper left opening after I crossed wide" tells you exactly what happened and why.
The four openings give you that system.
The body has four targets. Every technique either threatens one or closes one.
The Division
The body is divided into four quadrants by two lines: one horizontal at the waist, one vertical through the centerline.
Upper right — Above the waist, on your opponent's right side (your left as you face them). Includes the right shoulder, neck, and head.
Upper left — Above the waist, on your opponent's left side. Includes the left shoulder and the same targets from the other angle.
Lower right — Below the waist, on your opponent's right side. Legs, hip, and flank.
Lower left — Below the waist, on your opponent's left side.
Fiore explicitly numbers these in the Getty manuscript. The master figure in several plays calls out which opening is being taken or covered. This is not an abstraction imposed on the system — it is the system's own vocabulary.
Why It Matters
A guard covers certain openings and leaves others accessible.
Posta di Donna Destra is positioned to threaten the upper openings with a diagonal cut. It naturally covers the upper right while the cut travels. What it leaves open depends on how the opponent responds.
Tutta Porta di Ferro covers the lower openings strongly. The low blade position makes it difficult to target the legs and lower body effectively. But the high openings are more exposed than from an elevated guard.
Understanding this lets you read a guard as information rather than just a posture. If your opponent is in a low guard, the lower openings are covered and the upper ones are available. Your technique choice follows from that read.
Openings Are Not Static
An opening that exists at the start of an exchange may close as the technique develops, and a new one may appear.
When the opponent raises their guard to cover the upper right, the lower openings open. When they extend for a thrust, their arm and shoulder are exposed in ways they were not before. When they step offline, the opening that was directly in front of them shifts.
Training to read openings means training to read them as they change, not just at the start of the exchange.
Connection to the Fiore Curriculum
In the plays section, the four openings appear constantly without being named explicitly.
The Exchange of Thrusts takes the upper opening opposite to the incoming thrust. The Peasant's Blow exploits the opening created when the opponent's strike carries past center. The pommel strike in stretto targets the face — the upper opening — before the blade wraps to close behind the neck.
Reading those plays through the lens of the four openings makes the logic visible. The plays are not a collection of tricks. They are a set of answers to specific opening-and-cover problems.
In Practice
When reviewing a sparring exchange, use the openings as a diagnostic:
- What opening did the attack target?
- Was that opening actually available, or did the attacker misread the guard?
- What opened up as a result of the attack?
- Did the defender's response close the targeted opening, or did it close a different one while leaving the first exposed?
Most fencing errors reduce to one of two problems: attacking a closed opening, or failing to close the opening being attacked. The four openings make those errors visible and nameable.