The Scola Tower - or tower of St. John the Baptist - is a former military building located just beyond the northeastern tip (called tip Scola) of

Palmaria (island) Palmaria is an Italian island situated in the Ligurian Sea, at the westernmost end of the Gulf of La Spezia. With an area of , it is the largest island of an archipelago of three closely spaced islands jutting from the mainland at Portovenere. ...

Porto Venere Porto Venere (; until 1991 ''Portovenere''; ) is a town and ''comune'' (municipality) located on the Ligurian coast of Italy in the province of La Spezia. It comprises the three villages of Fezzano, Le Grazie and Porto Venere, and the three islan ...

, in the Gulf of Poets in the province of

La Spezia La Spezia (, or ; ; , in the local ) is the capital city of the province of La Spezia and is located at the head of the Gulf of La Spezia in the southern part of the Liguria region of Italy. La Spezia is the second-largest city in the Liguria ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

. It is part of, along with the Fort Cavour and Umberto I and the Batteria Semaforo, the defensive positions of Palmaria.

History and description

As with other coastal towers and lookouts of the Ligurian coast, the Scola Tower is part of a defensive system originally desired by the Senate of the

Republic of Genoa The Republic of Genoa ( ; ; ) was a medieval and early modern Maritime republics, maritime republic from the years 1099 to 1797 in Liguria on the northwestern Italy, Italian coast. During the Late Middle Ages, it was a major commercial power in ...

in the 16th and 17th centuries for the purposes of protecting the coast and, consequently, the towns and villages. According to some studies, the tower may have been built in the early 17th century for an estimated cost of 56,000 Genoese liras, and was in response to new ballistic technologies which forced the Senate of Genoa to a rapid conversion of existing defensive sites and the creation of new ones. The tower is pentagonal in shape with an average wall thickness of about , which accommodates up to eight people (eight soldiers, including a captain and a master "bombardero") and ten cannons, and guards the Bay of Palmaria, Porto Venere and

Lerici Lerici (, locally ) is a ''comune'' in the province of La Spezia, in the Italian region of Liguria, part of the Italian Riviera. It is situated on the coast of the Gulf of La Spezia, southeast of La Spezia. It is known as the place where t ...

. During the

Napoleonic Wars {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Napoleonic Wars , partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars , image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg , caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...

, it was at the centre of a naval engagement on 23 January 1800 between the British and French fleets, and was damaged by the British through their efforts to remove the latter from the Gulf of La Spezia, leaving it in a state of total neglect for the first half of the 19th century. Used for target practice by the

Marina Militare The Italian Navy (; abbreviated as MM) is one of the four branches of Italian Armed Forces and was formed in 1946 from what remained of the '' Regia Marina'' (Royal Navy) after World War II. , the Italian Navy had a strength of 30,923 active pe ...

and scheduled for demolition in 1915, it was saved by catching the interest of Ubaldo Mazzini, a local official at the Ministry of Education, and it was eventually decided to convert the tower to a lighthouse. Between 1976 and 1980, the structure underwent major restoration and consolidation of the perimeter wall.

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Other info
{{Islands of Italy Buildings and structures in Liguria 17th-century establishments in the Republic of Genoa

History and description

See also

References

External links