Welcome to the site Napoliforme

The close relationship between sea and land developed due to the threat of raids by Saracen pirates, uninterrupted from the Middle Ages to the late 17th century, which drove some of the inhabitants to seek shelter in the inland hills. Between the 14th and 15th centuries, a system of watchtowers was set up all along the coast to protect the coastline, identifying enemy ships in time to organise defence or escape. Towers built further inland were connected to the coastal towers, whose task was to spread the alarm from the coast (by night, by lighting fires, and by day, by means of smoke signals) to the villages on the hills, and from the towers, known as "cavallare", a messenger on horseback left to warn the more distant villages of the danger.Punta Campanella's grey tufa tower - flanked by the modern lighthouse - was built in the Angevin period (1334-1335) and rebuilt in the 16th century in the form it still retains: a central body on two levels with a barrel-shaped roof. It is located at the very tip of the promontory and its history began long before it was built: over the millennia, the area has been a trading post, a temple (the tower stands on the site of a temple dedicated to Athena by the Greeks and then to Minerva by the Romans), a defensive structure (the remains of a Roman wall at the foot of the tower) and possibly the site of Roman villas, remembered by architectural fragments visible on the surface and in the seabed where the rock sinks.