Torre dei Gualandi

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Torre della Muda, Giovanni Paolo Lasinio, engravings dated 1865

The Torre dei Gualandi or Muda Tower was a tower in Pisa, Italy and now forms part of the Palazzo dell'Orologio. It is on the north part of the Piazza dei Cavalieri. The tower was in the right part of the present building, the one without the four-light window. We can still see a corner of the old tower inside the gallery in the middle of the building. The name Muda comes since there were hold the eagles risen by the comune of Pisa when moulting the feathers (moult in italian is muta, since the name muda). Gualandi was the name of an ancient family of Pisa, that owned the tower in the XIII century.

Ugolino della Gherardesca, his sons and other members of his family were supposedly immured in the tower and starved to death in the thirteenth century. Dante, his contemporary, wrote about Gherardesca in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy. After this fact, the tower was known as Hunger Tower (Torre della fame).