The Torre dell’Argentiera is a coastal tower located in the municipality of Monte Argentario. Its location is in the northern part of the Argentario promontory, not far from the town of Porto Santo Stefano.
The tower was built in medieval times when the whole territory was controlled by the Aldobrandeschi. At that time the turriform building was located in the middle of an area enclosed by the curtain walls of an external fort. Subsequently passed to the Republic of Siena it was largely rebuilt in 1442, while retaining some of the pre-existing architectural elements.
In the second half of the sixteenth century, with the passage of Monte Argentario in the State of the Presidios, the fortification became a secondary sighting point in the defensive system of the promontory created by the Spanish, so that in some documents and maps dating back to the seventeenth century the tower is often defined as abandoned or is not mentioned at all.
The early divestment of the defensive structure led to the slow but inexorable degradation to which the entire complex went, determining the inevitable loss of the external fortress over time; currently, the military architectural structure is communal property.
The Torre dell’Argentiera has a quadrangular section, without a base with a shoe, with thick masonry structures covered in limestone where there are some loopholes at different heights; on the northern side was the entrance door to the tower that was reachable through a lost flight of external stairs that almost certainly culminated with a drawbridge. The access door, of rectangular architraved shape, culminates with a fine round arch with clear medieval origins. Overall, the tower is built on three levels.
The summit, which remained unconstrained due to the long degradation, originally had a summit crenellation that bordered the terrace from which the sentinels performed their functions of sighting and of emission of light signals in case of danger, in order to communicate with the other towers of the area.
The turriform building is located in the middle of a circular area delimited by the remains of the curtain walls of the ancient medieval outer fort.