The Tower of Famine

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy immortalises the Tower of Famine through its association with the tragic fate of Ugolino della Gherardesca, transforming what was once a modest structure—dating, at the latest, to the early twelfth century—into an enduring symbol of political betrayal and human suffering: ‘A narrow slit within the Muda’s wall—that now bears me the name of Famine’s tower, and that must still be closed to others’ [Breve pertugio dentro da la Muda / la qual per me ha’l titol de la fame, / e che conviene ancor ch’altrui si chiuda’]  (Inferno XXXIII, 22–24). Ugolino, then Capitano del Popolo, was imprisoned in the tower between July (or August) 1288 and March 1289, following his deposition in a violent power struggle led by a coalition of Ghibelline families under the direction of Pisa’s archbishop, Ruggieri degli Ubaldini. In an upper room of the tower—’and I heard them nailing up the door / below, that led into the dreadful tower’ [‘e io senti’ chiavar l’uscio di sotto / a l’orribile torre’] (Inferno XXXIII, 46–47)—the passing days were marked by the shifting light that barely filtered through a narrow slit—the ‘breve forame’ of Dante’s verse. There unfolded one of the most unforgettable tragedies of the European Middle Ages, both human and political: the death by starvation of Count Ugolino— ‘the tower bears me the name of famine’ [‘la Torre ha’l titol de la fame’]—together with his two sons and grandsons. From this episode, already referred to in early tradition, derives the name ‘Tower of Famine’, still in use today.

The term ‘muda’ appears to originate solely from Dante Alighieri’s tradition, as no official records from the city of Pisa attest to its use; ‘Tower of the Gualandi’ is therefore a more accurate name, supported by the earliest surviving documentary references. Likewise, what is known of the tower’s original function comes primarily from the tradition of commentaries on the Divine Comedy. From the nineteenth century onwards, Dante scholars have generally accepted—with caution—the hypothesis proposed by Francesco da Buti, a fourteenth-century Pisan commentator, who suggested that the ‘Torre della muda’ was ‘perhaps so called because the Commune’s eagles were kept there to moult’ [‘forse […] così era chiamata perché vi si tenessono l’aquile del Comune a mudare’]. While chronicles confirm that eagles formed part of Pisa’s symbolic regalia—used in battle and major civic ceremonies—the absence of documentary evidence means there is no certainty that they were housed in the tower specifically to moult their feathers [mudare]. A significant portion of the early commentary tradition, in fact, interprets the term muda metaphorically—as a cramped and oppressive space where men were made to suffer physically, ‘wasting away in the body’ [‘macerandosi nel corpo’].

Although the original function of the Tower of Famine cannot be determined with certainty, it is highly probable that it served a different purpose before being converted into a ‘dreadful prison’ [‘doloroso carcere’] (Inferno XXXIII, 56) to hold Ugolino della Gherardesca. This is confirmed by the Fragmenta historiae pisanae, a fairly reliable early source, which records a delay of twenty days for the tower’s adaptation—during which Ugolino and his family were held in the nearby Palazzo degli Anziani or Palazzo del Popolo. The tower appears to have remained, at least in part, a place of imprisonment even after Ugolino’s death. Dante’s ambiguous line—’and it must still be closed to others’ [‘conviene ancor ch’altrui si chiuda’] (Inf. XXXIII, 24)—may well allude to this continued use. Prompted in part by the increasingly unsustainable state of the structure, the decision to remove the prison ‘at the Sette Vie, near the house of the Anziani’ [‘ad septem vias, prope domum Anthianorum’] was not made until February 1318. Although the measure was not immediately implemented, from that point onwards the tower’s fate became ever more closely tied to the adjacent building—initially the seat of the Capitano del Popolo in 1327, and later, following the establishment of Florentine rule in 1406, the residence of the Capitano di custodia e balia and the Commissari.

Florentine rule contributed to the dismantling of many public structures in Pisa, and the Tower of Famine was no exception. During this period, the scant references to the tower derive primarily from the continued interest of Dante scholars. In his Annotazioni nel Dante, written between 1527 and 1528, the Venetian humanist Trifone Gabriel noted—though whether from direct observation or a local source remains uncertain—that the structure was ‘little less than ruined’ [‘poco men che roinata’]. During the Vasarian construction campaigns in Piazza dei Cavalieri (1562–1567), the tower served as makeshift housing for labourers and later as a source of building stone. By the end of these works, it had been severely compromised. The lost opera Il Conte Ugolino, composed in Pisa towards the close of the sixteenth century by Vincenzo Galilei—father of the more famous Galileo Galilei—may be read as a kind of swan song for one of the city’s most symbolically charged locations, just before its final disappearance. The tower’s republican and medieval legacy, along with the tragic notoriety conferred by Dante’s Divine Comedy, made it politically and ideologically incompatible with the image the Medici sought to project. Between 1605 and 1608, Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici ordered its complete erasure, having it incorporated into the new Palazzo dell’Orologio. His instruction was unequivocal: ‘remove from my sight this infamous memory of that tower, which truly is an infamous memory’ [‘levatemi dinanzi questa memoria infame di questa Torre, che è veramente una memoria infame’].

From the late eighteenth century through the nineteenth, changes in literary taste and a new political sensibility brought the Tower of Famine—or its lingering shadow—back to prominence in the itineraries of European visitors to Pisa. This revival gave rise to a widespread social pursuit: the search for its original location, a game of historical rediscovery that attracted the attention of many of Europe’s foremost intellectuals.

Amid renewed interest and rising nationalist sentiment, the period between the end of the First World War and the rise of Fascism marked a turning point in the rediscovery of the Tower of Famine, with the centenary of Dante’s death in 1921 providing a timely and symbolically charged occasion to re-evaluate its historical significance. After some initial hesitation, Peleo Bacci, then Superintendent of Fine Arts, definitively identified the Tower as forming the right-hand section of Palazzo dell’Orologio. The process of rediscovery culminated in a final restoration campaign, funded by the Scuola Normale Superiore (1975-1980), which recovered the surviving medieval fabric and reopened it to the public.

Beyond its physical remains, the myth of the Tower of Famine reverberates through hundreds of drawings, engravings, artworks, stage sets, films, and comics. It also inhabits the texts of tragedies, novels, and poems, layered with meaning over the course of centuries.