•Torre Scola in Italian, originally known as the tower of St. John the Baptist.
•A magnificent half-ruined fortress of the Gulf of Poets in the coastal region of Liguria in north-western Italy.
•It is a military defensive fortress built by the Republic of Genoa in 1606 to protect the coasts and villages.
•The fortress was designed to accommodate 8 soldiers (including a bomber and their captain).
•The Scola Tower is pentagonal and is about 42 feet tall.
•It was built with large blocks of square stone and has a thickness of the walls of approximately 4 feet.
•That’s why it has survived violent events and the pᴀssage of time.
•Its corners are topped with a turret and an observational opening for the 10 canons which were meant to protect the area from attacks from the sea.
•The British bombardment seriously damaged the tower during the naval battle held between the French and the British fleets on 23rd June 1800.
•A significant part of the structure broke down and it was not functional anymore and it was completely abandoned very soon after that.
Torre Scola (Tower of San Giovanni) Battista, a former military building located just in the middle of the Gulf of Poets in province of La Spezia, Italy. This tower was built by the people of Genoa in 1606 AD, on a rock just north of the island of Palmaria in Porto Venere in the Province of La Spezia – a land known for its natural beauty.As with other coastal towers and lookouts of the Ligurian coast, the Scola Tower is part of a defensive system originally desired by the Senate of the Republic of Genoa in 16th-17th Centuries AD, for the purposes of protecting the coast and, consequently, the towns and villages. According to some studies, tower may have been built in early 17th Century AD, for an estimated cost of 56000 Genoese liras, and was in response to new ballistic technologies which forced the Senate of Genoa to a rapid conversion of existing defensive sites and the creation of new ones.
Torre Scola rests on a pentagonal base, built with large blocks of square stone with walls which average 4m in thickness. Every corner of the fort is topped with a turret, and an observational opening for the 10 canons which were meant to protect the fortress at sea; and guards the Bay of Palmaria, Porto Venere and Lerici. The fort could easily accomodate 8 soldiers; including Captain.
During Napoleonic Wars, it was at the center of a naval engagement on January 23, 1800 AD, between British and French fleets, and was damaged by British through their efforts to remove the latter from the Gulf of La Spezia, leaving it in a state of total neglect for the first half of 19th Century AD. Since then, the tower was completely abandoned.
The tower was used for target practice by the Marina Militare and scheduled for demolition in 1915, it was saved by catching the interest of Ubaldo Mazzini, a local official at the Ministry of Education, and it was eventually decided to convert the tower to a lighthouse. Between 1976-1980, the structure has undergone major restoration and consolidation of the perimeter wall. Today continues to impress visitors with its impressive and extraordinary beauty.
