Rising alone from the turquoise waters off the coast of Italy, this fortress—now worn by time and crowned with wild greenery—whispers of a forgotten past. Known as Torre Scola, it was built in the 16th century by the Republic of Genoa, a lonely sentinel designed to guard the Gulf of La Spezia from pirates and foreign navies.
But centuries pᴀssed, and wars shifted shores. Cannons fell silent, and stone walls cracked under the weight of salt and years. Now nature reclaims what man once built—trees root in battlements, vines cling to mossy stones, and the sea gently laps at its eroded foundation.
From above, the ruin resembles a ghostly castle adrift in time—its courtyard overtaken by silence, its chambers open to wind and sky. What soldiers once stood watch here? What fears did they face in the mist of dawn? We may never know.
Yet as the sun sets and paints the waters gold, Torre Scola stands proud in its decay—no longer a place of battle, but a monument to resilience. A memory, carved in stone, that endures beyond the grasp of history books—a castle lost to the sea, and found in the heart of wonder.
Torre Scola, also known as the Tower of San Giovanni Battista, is a military building located just in the middle of the Gulf of Poets in Liguria, Italy. This tower was built by the people of Genoa in 1606 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.
Torre Scola rests on a pentagonal base, built with large blocks of square stone with walls which average 4 meters 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. The fort could easily accomodate 8 soldiers. The tower was destroyed in 1800 during naval battles between the British and the French fleets that tried to drive Napoleon’s troops out of the gulf. Since then, the tower was completely abandoned.
In 1915, after threat of demolition, the fortress was turned into a beacon and between 1976 and 1980, it was radically restored and today continues to impress visitors with its impressive and extraordinary beauty.
