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Fortress

Ligny Tower

Italy · 17th century

Founded
1670
Heritage status
Italian national heritage
Location
Trapani
Coordinates
38.0196°, 12.49697°
Open on the map →Wikipedia ↗
Ligny Tower in Italy
Photo: Leandro Neumann Ciuffo uploaded and · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Description

Ligny Tower (Italian: Torre di Ligny, Sicilian: Turrignì) is a coastal watchtower in Trapani, Sicily. It was built between 1671 and 1672 at a strategic position on the city's western coast. Today, the tower is in good condition, and it is open to the public as an archaeological museum.

Ligny Tower was built on a narrow strip of land on Trapani's western coast, to defend the city from attacks by the Barbary corsairs. It was named after the Viceroy of Sicily, Claude Lamoral, 3rd Prince of Ligne, who had ordered its construction. The tower was designed by the Flemish architect Carlos de Grunenbergh. It has a square base with scarped walls, with four corner turrets which originally contained lanterns.

The tower was proposed in a meeting held at Palermo on 11 January 1670. Construction began in 1671, and it was inaugurated in October 1672.

A passage connecting the tower with the mainland was built in 1806, and guns were installed on the tower's roof until 1862. It was subsequently used as a semaphore station, but it was eventually abandoned.

In World War II, the tower was used by the Regia Marina and was armed with anti-aircraft guns.

The tower was restored in 1979 by the architect Francesco Terranova. Since 1983, the tower has been an archaeological museum, known as Museo civico Torre di Ligny.

Text adapted from “Ligny Tower” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

In the rankings

Ligny Tower ranks #4,046 of 9,040 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #306 of the 555 mapped in Italy. Founded 1670, it is older than 24% of the atlas's dated landmarks, one of 710 atlas entries founded in the 17th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 1,121 times in the last 60 days, more than 53% of the atlas. 2 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. It is one of the 32 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of Sicily. See how Italy compares in the castle statistics.

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