Tour de Castelluccio

Tour de Castelluccio
Location of Tour de Castelluccio in Corsica
Coordinates 41°52′32″N 8°35′16″E / 41.87556°N 8.58778°ECoordinates: 41°52′32″N 8°35′16″E / 41.87556°N 8.58778°E
Built before 1597

The Tour de Castelluccio (Corsican: Torra di Castelluchju) is a ruined Genoese tower located in the commune of Ajaccio (Corse-du-Sud) off the west coast of the French island of Corsica. The tower sits on the southern end of the Île Grande Sanguinaire, the largest island in the Îles Sanguinaires archipelago.

The tower was one of a series of coastal defences built by the Republic of Genoa between 1530 and 1620 to stem the attacks by Barbary pirates.[1] The exact year when the tower was built is not known but it is mentioned in a report written in 1597 for the Genoese authorities by the engineer Britio Tramallo and the lawyer Gieronimo Bonaparte. The report gives the dimensions of three structures on the island: a chapel, a round tower and the surviving small square tower (la torretta piccolo). The small tower is recorded as being 5.6 m in height with walls 0.63 m thick at the base reducing to 0.31 m at the top. The large round tower has not survived. It was 7.75 m in diameter.[2]

Notes and references

  1. ↑ Graziani, Antoine-Marie (2000). "Les ouvrages de défense en Corse contre les Turcs (1530-1650)". In Vergé-Franceschi, Michel; Graziani, Antoine-Marie. La guerre de course en Méditerranée (1515-1830) (in French). Paris: Presses de l'Université Paris IV-Sorbonne. pp. 73–144. ISBN 2-84050-167-8.
  2. ↑ Graziani, Antoine-Marie (1992). Les Tours Littorales (in French and Italian). Ajaccio, France: Alain Piazzola. pp. 84–85. ISBN 2-907161-06-7.

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