Towers

Following the discovery and notice of the towers of San Gimignano yesterday, for which see references 1 and 2, I thought to take a look at my fat picture book of Italy, possibly bought second hand from one of the rather good second hand bookshops which used to be found at Merton Mills - formerly a workshop for Liberty prints, near a very big Sainsbury's and near the remains of Merton Priory - much of which last was recycled on dissolution for Nonsuch Palace - which last was itself recycled after quite a short working life.

A large format book in French, maybe 13 by 10 by getting on for 2 inches, published in 1934, presumably a time when there were plenty of French intellectuals who were happy to be associated with Mussolini, with fifteen of them contributing a regional chapter. One or two of the names are vaguely familiar. We also have what appears to be a large and florid signature on the very first page, just inside the front cover. Quite indecipherable.

Then we have a hand written introduction by Mussolini, presumably reproduced photographically, the second page of which is snapped above.

San Gimignano is to be found to the south west of Florence, to the north west of Sienna and to the north east of Volterra. This last being another place with plenty of history.

We are offered a number of pictures of the towers, which appear to come with very few windows, but no words. I clearly need to look into the matter: what exactly were these towers for? One supposes that they do have castle-like functions, but also that the height of your tower was a marker of your power, perhaps that of your family. Phallic symbols? Or is what you have now just the lift shaft (as it were) of some larger structure?

With such words as there are coming at the very end of the chapter (on Tuscany and including Elba) and concerning some important paintings in houses of religion. Nothing about the towers - although there is lots about the civil strife which seems to have plagued the whole region in the middle ages, all mixed up with the troubles reported at reference 3.

PS 1: Saint Gimignano was bishop of Modena in the fourth century, well to the north of the present town. It is there that he is taken most seriously.

PS 2: the fourth snap is to be read from top to bottom, rather than from left to right. Which I suppose is fair enough, given that we are in full page format, rather than two or three column format. Some lines do go right across the page.

PS 3: later that evening: I have now consulted reference 4, from which I learn that the old town of Florence had between 100 and 150 of these towers, with clusters of them connected by wooden bridges. They were indeed used as residences for the rich and they were invulnerable to causal attack. And the one picture of one shows windows and doors in at least one of the four walls. A lot of the towers were cleared away in the 19th century to make way for banks and such like and more of them were demolished by the Germans on their exit in 1944 to block the approaches to Ponte Vecchio - which they left intact. All this from a book old enough that all the many pictures have been stuck in, rather than printed in-situ in the way of today. And at least one of them was not rectangular, rather slowing down the cutting out.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Gimignano.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/battersea-rise.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guelphs_and_Ghibellines.

Reference 4: The City of Florence - Guglielmo Amerighi - 1962.