The Torre del Mangia is a

tower A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...

Siena Siena ( , ; lat, Sena Iulia) is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena. The city is historically linked to commercial and banking activities, having been a major banking center until the 13th and 14th centuri ...

, in the

Tuscany Tuscany ( ; it, Toscana ) is a Regions of Italy, region in central Italy with an area of about and a population of about 3.8 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence (''Firenze''). Tuscany is known for its landscapes, history, art ...

region of

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. Built in 1338-1348, it is located in the

Piazza del Campo Piazza del Campo is the main public space of the historic center of Siena, Tuscany, Italy and is regarded as one of Europe's greatest medieval squares. It is renowned worldwide for its beauty and architectural integrity. The Palazzo Pubblico and i ...

, Siena's main

square In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length adj ...

, next to the

Palazzo Pubblico The Palazzo Pubblico (''town hall'') is a palace in Siena, Tuscany, central Italy. Construction began in 1297 to serve as the seat of the Republic of Siena's government, which consisted of the Podestà and Council of Nine, the elected officia ...

(Town Hall). When built it was one of the tallest

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...

towers in medieval Italy. At 102 m it is now Italy's second tallest after

Cremona Cathedral Cremona Cathedral ( it, Duomo di Cremona, ''Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta''), dedicated to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a Catholic cathedral in Cremona, Lombardy, northern Italy. It is the seat of the Bishop of Cremona. Its be ...

Torrazzo Torrazzo is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Biella in the Italian region Piedmont, located about northeast of Turin and about southwest of Biella. Torrazzo borders the following municipalities: Bollengo, Burolo, Chiaverano, Ma ...

(), the Asinelli tower in

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...

at 97 m being third.

History

The tower was built to be exactly the same height as

Siena Cathedral Siena Cathedral ( it, Duomo di Siena) is a medieval church in Siena, Italy, dedicated from its earliest days as a Roman Catholic Marian church, and now dedicated to the Assumption of Mary. It was the episcopal seat of the Diocese of Siena, and ...

as a sign that the church and the state had equal power. The name refers to its first

bellringer A bell-ringer is a person who rings a bell, usually a church bell, by means of a rope or other mechanism. Despite some automation of bells for random swinging, there are still many active bell-ringers in the world, particularly those with an adv ...

, Giovanni di Balduccio, nicknamed ''Mangiaguadagni'' (‘Profit eater’) either for his spendthrift tendency, idleness or gluttony.

Sections

The tower has visually distinct levels, from the bottom: # a marble

loggia In architecture, a loggia ( , usually , ) is a covered exterior gallery or corridor, usually on an upper level, but sometimes on the ground level of a building. The outer wall is open to the elements, usually supported by a series of columns ...

at the base # a long red brick shaft # a stone section that flares out slightly # a short pale-gray upper loggia # a marble (uppermost) structure. The loggia where the tower meets the Piazza del Campo, known as the ''Cappella di Piazza'', was added in 1352 to fulfil a vow to the

Holy Virgin Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother o ...

by Sienese survivors of the

Black Death The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causi ...

. The corner pilasters attained their current form in 1378, the sculptures decorating them being executed in 1378-1382 by Mariano d'Angelo Romanelli e Bartolomeo di Tommé. The simple wooden ceiling once covering the loggia was replaced by the current Renaissance marble vault in 1461-1468 by

Antonio Federighi Antonio Federighi (circa 1420 – 1490) was an Italian architect and sculptor of the Renaissance period. He was born and active mainly in Siena, Italy. He began as a sculptor for the Duomo of Siena, and worked there alongside Jacopo della Quercia ...

, also responsible for the bizarre decorations of the coronation. In 1537-1539

Il Sodoma Il Sodoma (1477 – 14 February 1549) was the name given to the Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi. Il Sodoma painted in a manner that superimposed the High Renaissance style of early 16th-century Rome onto the traditions of ...

painted a

fresco Fresco (plural ''frescos'' or ''frescoes'') is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaste ...

above the altar, now housed in the town museum in the Palazzo Pubblico. The upper-middle part in stone was built by Agostino di Giovanni to the design of one ''Mastro Lippo pittore'', probably identifiable with

Lippo Memmi Lippo Memmi (c. 1291 – 1356) was an Italian painter from Siena. He was the foremost follower of Simone Martini, who was his brother-in-law. Together with Martini, in 1333 he painted what is regarded as one of the masterworks of the Intern ...

. It consists of a

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an extension of the wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/breast'). Whe ...

resting on

corbel In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the s ...

s. The pronounced petal-like arches between the corbels have led writers to describe the structure as a tulip or lily. The clock on the lower part of the shaft was added in 1360. There are three bells, the largest one is called the ''"Sunto"'' - an abbreviation of assunto, a reference to the assumption of the Virgin. The bell plays a notable role in the celebrations of the

Palio Palio is the name given in Italy to an annual athletic contest, very often of a historical character, pitting the neighbourhoods of a town or the hamlets of a ''comune'' against each other. Typically, they are fought in costume and commemorate som ...

. The walls of the tower are approximately thick on each side.

Towers inspired by the Torre del Mangia

A number of towers have been inspired by the Torre del Mangia. These include: * The

Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower The Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower, or colloquially Old Joe, is a clock tower and campanile located in Chancellor's court at the University of Birmingham, in the suburb of Edgbaston. It is the tallest free-standing clock tower in the ...

(nicknamed Old Joe) at the

University of Birmingham , mottoeng = Through efforts to heights , established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univers ...

, UK, was inspired by the Torre del Mangia, and couples a similar design with Victorian

redbrick A red brick university (or redbrick university) was originally one of the nine civic universities founded in the major industrial cities of England in the 19th century. However, with the 1960s proliferation of plate glass universities and t ...

styles. * A strongly influenced clock tower built for the

Waterbury Union Station The Waterbury Union Station building is located on Meadow Street in the city of Waterbury, Connecticut, United States. It is a brick building dating to the first decade of the 20th century. Its tall clock tower, built by the Seth Thomas Company ...

Waterbury, Connecticut Waterbury is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut on the Naugatuck River, southwest of Hartford and northeast of New York City. Waterbury is the second-largest city in New Haven County, Connecticut. According to the 2020 US Census, in 20 ...

. Designed by

McKim, Mead & White McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm that came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in fin de siècle New York. The firm's founding partners Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), Wil ...

and completed in 1909, it today houses the headquarters of the region's daily newspaper. * The all-

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

Pilgrim Monument The Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown, Massachusetts, was built between 1907 and 1910 to commemorate the first landfall of the Pilgrims in 1620 and the signing of the Mayflower Compact in Provincetown Harbor. This campanile is the tallest all- ...

Provincetown, Massachusetts Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Provincet ...

is a scaled-down near replica of the Torre del Mangia, but for its materials and height. Designed by

Willard T. Sears Willard Thomas Sears (November 5, 1837 – May 21, 1920) was a prominent New England architect of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who worked primarily in the Gothic Revival and Renaissance Revival styles. In 1861, Sears opened ...

, it was built from 1907 to 1910 to commemorate the 21 November 1620 landing of the

Mayflower Pilgrims The Pilgrims, also known as the Pilgrim Fathers, were the English settlers who came to North America on the ''Mayflower'' and established the Plymouth Colony in what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts, named after the final departure port of Plymo ...

there. The monument is the tallest all-granite structure in the United States. * The Dock Tower in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, UK. Built in 1852 and standing, tall, the vertical

reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contro ...

provided hydraulic tower to open the lock gates of the Royal Dock. Although obsolete from 1892 onward, it remains a proud monument to the town and its rich fishing history. * The tower at the Pine Street Inn at the South End of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, Massachusetts, formerly a fire station and fire watch tower, is also modelled on the Torre del Mangia. Boston's tower, which is tall, designed and built in 1892 by

Edmund March Wheelwright Edmund March Wheelwright (September 14, 1854 – August 15, 1912) was one of New England's most important architects in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and served as city architect for Boston, Massachusetts from 1891&ndash ...

, is made of brick like the Italian original and was originally designed as part of the central fire station and used as a fire lookout.Pine Street Inn (Boston)
- Wikimapia * The main building of the Spanish business & law school,

ICADE ICADE is the brand name by which two schools of the Comillas Pontifical University, located in Madrid (Spain), are known. It stands for '' Instituto Católico de Administración y Dirección de Empresas'' (''Catholic Institute of Business Administ ...

, in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

, is topped with a clock tower modelled on the Torre de Mangia.

Footnotes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Torre Del Mangia Buildings and structures completed in 1348 Towers completed in the 14th century

Mangia ''Mangia'' (also styled ''Mangia'', with a trailing apostrophe) is a video game for the Atari 2600 released by Spectravision in 1983. The title "Mangia" is an Italian word meaning "eat!". The North American version is one of the rarest games for ...

Buildings and structures in Siena Tourist attractions in Tuscany Clocks in Italy 1348 establishments in Europe 14th-century establishments in Italy

History

Sections

Towers inspired by the Torre del Mangia

See also

Footnotes

References