Puglia, with its 784km of coastline, has always been a frontier land, a landing point but also a territory of conquest by invaders and pirates from Dalmatia, Albania, or the Greek islands.
The coastal towers were built, for the most part, by the Spaniards in 1500 to create a real sighting system on the sea to protect the Kingdom of Naples.Often, these sighting points were positioned in such a way as to be visually connected to each other - or to other towers scattered inland - in order to transmit any danger alerts. In practice, a real communication line was created along the entire coast to quickly transmit information on invasions.
The communications took place by means of smoke signals, during the day, or with fire, at night, or again, bells were used. The watchtowers are usually small in size because they were designed to accommodate one or two soldiers with little artillery; after all, their purpose was not to oppose the raids but only to spot the enemy's moves as soon as possible.
The few larger towers were built by private individuals who also wanted to use them as a refuge or as the seat of a military command and therefore intended to contain provisions, weapons reserves and “cavalrymen”, men who reached towns on horseback. In some cases the towers were also equipped with a boat and its crew, "the guard felucca".
Access to the interior of these buildings was guaranteed by a very narrow compartment placed, for safety reasons, distant from the ground level and was reached via non-fixed wooden stairs.
Inside, a cistern was set up for the collection of rainwater and service areas and for hospitality.
The architecture of the coastal towers was essential and responded fundamentally to the functionalist aspects, renouncing any decorativism.
The oldest towers, located on the northern coast of the Gargano and along the southern coasts of Otranto and Gallipoli, are around 12 meters high and are characterized by a truncated cone base and a cylindrical body with a single vaulted space inside; the rainwater collection tank is placed under the base or inside the base itself.
Around the second half of the 1500s, more imposing towers were built, with a quadrangular plan with a truncated pyramid base. The state of conservation depends on the material used for the construction: the limestone towers are better preserved than those built in sandstone. The construction of the entire sighting system proceeded extremely slowly because it was economically very expensive and sometimes the towers planned or under construction were never completed. The entire defensive work probably ended in 1700 with the completion of about 130 towers which over time were entrusted to ecclesiastics or nobles who acquired the title of captain towers.
During the first and second world wars the towers once again became observation points, thanks to their strategic position.
Some of these towers have been recovered and house institutions for the protection of the landscape, as in the case of Torre Guaceto, in the Brindisi area, where the headquarters of the WWF Nature Reserve and a small but very interesting museum with flora and fauna finds of great interest are located.
Visiting Torre Guaceto
www.riservaditorreguaceto.it
