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Torre dell’Acqua

Torre dell’Acqua

La Torre dell’Acqua is a coastal tower located in the municipality of Monte Argentario, on a rise that rises west of the hamlet of Porto Ercole and north-west of the Forte Stella.

The tower was built by the Sienese during the Renaissance, more precisely during the fifteenth century. The tower was an integral part of the coastal defense system of the Republic of Siena. The area in which the tower was built has brought to light a series of finds and settlements dating back to the fifth century BC, part of whose ruins were used as a base for the construction of the Sienese tower.

The history of the defensive structure was however already marked in 1555 when the Spanish troops, allied with the militias of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, attacked and conquered it, forcing the Sienese to surrender definitively: since then, the area of ​​Monte Argentario part of the State of the Presidios.

The tower, however, did not re-enter in the projects of the reorganization of the defensive system of the Argentario promontory, remaining consequently abandoned since the late sixteenth century.

At the end of the nineteenth century a section of the new aqueduct was built in the tower area, which supplied Porto Ercole using a source located further upstream: at that time the old defensive structure was already lost. However, in 1974 the remains were excavated during the excavation works for the construction of some nearby residential buildings.

The Torre dell’Acqua, located near the Fosso dei Molini, comes in the form of ruins, which were brought to light by the excavation campaigns carried out since 1974.

Of the ancient tower, which until the beginning of the seventies was believed to have been lost, there are some stretches of the thick masonry structures made of large blocks of stone, at the base of which are visible some much older building materials, attributable to the archaeological remains dating from the 5th century B.C

The tower had a square plan, apparently without a shoe base.