Torre della Pelosa
Interesting facts
- It is one of roughly 105 coastal towers raised around Sardinia, a network planned from the 1570s against raids by Barbary corsairs.
- The towers were run from Cagliari by the Royal Tower Administration, founded in 1583 and paid for partly by taxes on goods exported from the coast.
- Neighbouring towers passed warnings to each other with fire and smoke from their roofs, backed by horns and bells using agreed codes.
- Besides its three heavy cannon, the garrison had a spingarda, a light swivel gun, and several muskets.
- On the roof platform stood a small semicircular shelter, known as the mezzaluna or half-moon, for the men on watch.
- The tower's base stands only about three metres above the sea on its little islet.
- The Royal Tower Administration was abolished by royal decree in 1842, four years before this tower was finally decommissioned.
Why it is worth it
The Torre della Pelosa sits on a rocky islet just off one of the most famous beaches in the Mediterranean, at the northwestern tip of Sardinia. Behind it stretches La Pelosa, a strip of fine pale sand and shallow water so clear it looks almost weightless; in front, the Isola Piana and the island of Asinara close the horizon. The name comes from the beach, originally Sa Palosa, probably for the seagrass that washes up there in quantity.
The tower was part of the chain of coastal forts with which Sardinia's Spanish rulers guarded the island's shores from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, and it was standing by 1578, when the viceroy's correspondence already speaks of the need for repairs. Its position was chosen with care: it watches the entrance to the Asinara strait, the passage by which boats from the open sea reached the low, sandy and easily raided coast of the Gulf of Asinara, and it kept visual contact with the towers on the Isola Piana and on Capo Falcone. It was a heavy tower of the kind the documents call "de armas", manned by a commander, a gunner and three or four soldiers with three large cannon.
Built of local schist, it is a truncated cone about 10 m high and 16 m across at the base, with walls around 2.5 m thick. The entrance hatch is six metres up; as in most Sardinian towers, the garrison climbed in by rope or wooden ladders that could be pulled up when danger appeared. Inside, a single mushroom-vaulted chamber rests on a central pillar and is divided into three spaces, each with a loophole, and a narrow stair in the thickness of the wall leads to the gun platform on the roof. The tower was decommissioned in 1846. Today it is the silhouette that completes the view from the beach — dark stone against turquoise water.
Getting there
The tower is at Capo Falcone in the municipality of Stintino, a few kilometres beyond the village at the end of the road from Porto Torres, which lies about 23 km away. The nearest airport is Alghero-Fertilia (AHO), about 38 km away. The tower stands on its islet just off La Pelosa beach and is seen from the shore.
On these lists
40.97094, 8.20705per Wikidata