Located in proximity to the coast near the mouth of the Ombrone river and in the vicinity of the Uccellina mountains, the Trappola tower was surrounded by a building which, since 1789, was used as a customs seat.
The building which was initially on the shore of the sea, in order to protect the tower from incursions was, in 1951, five kilometres far from it, as Mazzolai confirms. The advancing of the coast has in fact been calculated as eight metres every year. In this place and near the mouth of the river Albegna, some salt-works had since ancient times existed: this is confirmed by Repetti who had based his conclusion on what written in a document by Arrigo m on the 17th of July 1051, in which the monks of Saint Antimo Abbey ( Abbazia di S. Antimo), in Orcia Valley ( Valle d’ Orcia), would be given thirty salt-works in the area of Campo Albiniano. According to Aldemolli and Nicolosi, the tower was built in 1283 by Meo Guiducci of Torrenieri, under specific instructions of the Sienna Commune ( Comune di Siena ) which, in 1318, installed there Turi from Campagnatico as Deputy Podesta. The news probably comes from two tombstones which had been respectively put one on the side of the buildings of the Grosseto salt-works and the other on the side towards the sea:
HOC OPUS IN CASTRO HOC FECIT FIERI PRO
COMUNI SENESI MAJUS GUIDUCCI DE TORRERIO
Cm. SEN. IN ANNO MCCLXXXIII
ANNO DOMINI MCCCXVIII
FRATER BARTHOLOMEUS TURE CAMPAGNATICO CSM SEN. VICIS CASTRIS
POTESTAS
Cardarelli confirms the news:
Near the current little house of Trappola there was in medieval time a little castle with the function of protecting a small harbour (in the original Italian: “ Presso l’attuale casina della Trappola era sorto nel medioevo un piccolo castello in funzione protettiva per un porto di piccolo dimensioni”). At the time of the Medici Grand Duchy the building was used as both a seat for the salt-works, as confirmed by a report written by Baldassarre Peruzzi in 1531, and sighting tower and fort. As described by De Vita, to turn the building into a fortification , Simone Cenga from Urbino carried out some works on it in 1570: according to Barsanti, Bravieri and Rombai, instead, the tower was built, by following the plan of Baldassarrre Lanci between 1561 and 1578, in conjunction to the walls which also included the warehouses and other buildings used for the administration of the salt-works. In the complex where it was also situated a church dedicated to Saint Anthony ( S. Antonio), lived the Castellan, and the garrison. Their duty was to defend the coast and the salt-works from the attacks of the pirates, repress the smuggling and to have maritime and sanitary laws respected. Every day the light cavalrymen ( Cavalleggeri di scorreria) also called Cavallari checked the coast to keep the authorities informed of what was happening there and to bring orders from one seat to another.
In 1592 Ferdinand ( Ferdinanado) of the Medici Family founded the Ufficio dei Fossi in Grosseto and made sure it would have financial profits by giving it a piece of land ( latifondo) already belonging to Saint Mary’s Church ( Santa Maria) in Grosseto. To connect Grosseto to the coast, he had the river Ombrone embanked from the city to Trappola tower, which at that time was on the bank of the Tyrrhenian Sea. For a long time, in the vicinity of Trappola Tower, there were some functioning salt-works: it was therefore important to provide the new urban area with some commerce of salt. One has also to remember that the salt-works had always been considered one of the main privileges of taxation ( in the original Italian “ le saline furono sempre considerate uno dei privilegi capitali del fisco”) and were consequently very important for the economy of the territory. The historian Pecci informs us about the small church which was part of the whole complex: “ Trappola Tower is built in bricks and has a church. From a distance this tower looks like a small stronghold. It is located on the bank of river Ombrone: today, however, this tower is rather far from the above mentioned river. Near Trappola tower there is another small tower, built in broken bits of stone: the salt workers used to stay here until 1758, when another building was built for them. This building was two miles away from Castiglione, towards Grosseto, in an area which was under the Sienese regulations” ( in the original Italian: La torre della Trappola, fabbricata in mattoni, ove e’ una chiesa, con Cura amovibile, come si disse sopra. Questa Torre, che pare una piccola Rocca, rimane sulla sponda del Fiume Ombrone, ma oggi cosi’ distante dal mare che il di lei cannone appena v’arrivava. Tal cosa depende dall’interramento che fu sulla bocca di detto Fiume, il quale nel tempo delle sue frequenti escrescenze, per l’esperienza gia’ fattane, porta fra le acque contenute nel suo Alveo fino a una trentesima sesta porzione di terra, la qual cosa fa si che, oltre all’esser pericolosa per le secche, e in costante per I bastimenti l’imboccatura d’esso Fiume, e’ larga un lungo miglio, il mare si va discostando, per cosi’ dire, a occhi vergenti.
Distante poco piu’ di un tiro di fucile da questa torre verso il mare vi e’ un’altra antica Torretta, fabbricata di rottami di pietra, dove si faceva la Canova a’ lavoranti attorno alle Saline, che quivi rimangono, e nelle quail si e’ fabbricato il sale fino al 1758, finche’ n’e’ stato costruito un altro edificio, non pero’ancora ultimato, due miglia distante da Castiglioni verso Grosseto, in luogo di giurisdizione Senese). The small tower Pecci mentions in the document was built by the Sienese in 1283 in order to defend the salt works, and was later transformed into a storage after the construction of New Tower ( Torre Nuova): it was demolished when Leopold was in charge of the area and the materials were used to build a new foyer in Ombrone Mouth ( Bocca d’Ombrone).
Trappola Tower and Sale Tower, today almost completely destroyed, were mentioned in a detailed map concerning Alberese Farm: the complex was later drawn up by Warren in 1749, during his visits to Maremma.
Trappola Tower was completely built in bricks, made in a furnace which used to supply the material for the whole of Maremma. It was fifty ells high, and well built: the access was through a flight of stairs at whose top there was a draw bridge. It was very spacious and therefore offered plenty of rooms for the Castellan, who lived on the first floor, the soldiers and the gunner: the area at the top was used for the munitions and the battery. Trappola tower was surrounded by factories. A document kept in the Florence State Archives ( Archivio di Stato di Firenze), includes a water colour which reminds us of Warren’s, although the side painted was not the frontal one but that one facing the river. An identical reproduction of this painting, whose writings had been translated from French, is kept at the Historic and Cultural Institute ( Istituto Storico e di Cultura). This tower was bigger than the other ones in the area, had the access through a draw bridge and had inside not only one area, as it used to be, but four rooms and a flight of stairs to go to the upper floors. The external ridge with brackets and embrasures, according to the sienese typology, was surmounted by a series of loopholes and an upper area covered with a roof, where there were two rows of windows. They were squared at the bottom and big in the higher parts, behind which there was the room for up to twelve pieces of artillery.
On the façade there is something unusual: a projection of the surface up to the height of the brackets, built in bricks like the tower, where there was a small window with embrasure and the entrance door. Some buildings which surrounded the tower are indicated and drawn in a rather schematic way in some documents: these include the Saint Anthony’s chapel ( Cappella di S. Antonio) with the porticos and three arches, a brick furnace of the Magistrate of the salt, a warehouse and the quarters of the Commissario of the salt. In a 1459 plan by Ciocchi and Fortini of the Grosseto plain and its surrounding areas, and in another one dated 1382 by Domenici, a writer had found some useful news regarding the Trappola salt-works, which he had then put together in a document in which he describes that “ the Trappola Salt-works did not produce either the expected quantity or quality of salt as they were too near the River Ombrone, and because its mouth was always covered with earth. This is why these salt-works were abandoned and rebuilt around the Castiglione area by Ximenes. The building was turned into customs, as understandable from the manuscript containing the contracts and the inventories of the State Customs ( Dogana Di Stato) from 1783 to 1796 ( in the original Italian: “ le saline della Trappola non producevano ne’ quantita’ ne’ qualita’ di Sale che si sperava per essere troppo vicine il loro Canale all’acqua dolce dell’Ombrone e a causa della sua Foce sempre interrita. Questa dunque e’ la ragione per cui le saline in questo luogo vennero abbandonate e ricostruite dallo Ximenes verso le Marse di Castiglione. L’edificio venne trasformato in dogana come possiamo dedurre da un manoscritto contenente i contratti e gli inventari delle Dogane dello Stato dal 1783 al 1796.”)
As for the Trappola Tower, only a few inventories of the years between 1789 and 1790 have been found, along with a drawing, probably by the same architect Pietro Conti who was in charge of the transformation of some of the buildings which surrounded the tower in Dogana.
The works were completed on the 4th of June 1789 and the inventory of what had been realised was countersigned by Luigi Ceccarelli, who was the internal warden in charge of the General Administration of the First Department ( Primo Dipartimento), by the architect and two more people.
On the first floor there was the quarters of the Customs Officer, which in the description is called old quarter, the quarters of the Warden composed of a room above the stables, another one called camera a volta ( room with a vault), a big room above the Customs area ( Dogana) called Stanza di scoperta, and the Loggia of the tank ( Loggia della Cisterna).
The buildings of the tank, of which there is a detailed description in the same pamphlet, and breather pipe were started in 1790 and were finished on the14th of May of the same year. This description is also countersigned as the previous one.
At the front of the tower, above the portal, a window, not found in older buildings which overlooked a small terrace, was probably turned into a door to make the stay of the Castellan more comfortable and pleasant.
On the terrace, at the top of the building, was instead added a new area for the guardian and , on one side of the roof, a bell tower was raised to support the bell used in case of peril.
In the overall planimetry, on the left side, appears the Salt Tower ( Torre del Sale), previously mentioned by Pecci and Flaminio Nelli, Podesta of Grosseto, during a visit intended to check the possibility of sighting ray from the various towers dislocated in the area.
In 1793, the imminent peril of foreign troops approaching Tuscany from the sea, forced Ferdinand ( Ferdinanado) 3rd to think of how to protect and defend the coast. As a result of this, the efficiency of the forts was checked and the garrisons were reinforced. The survey works were given to Pietro Conti, who had before been in charge of the organization of the Customs. The Trappola tower was among those improved, as reported in a document.
In the Leopold’s Land Register ( Catasto Leopoldino) of 1823, drawn up by the land-surveyor Martino Puccioni, the Trappola tower with all the connected buildings, is under the section N of Grosseto. In the tables of the same land-register, this property belongs to the Regie Fabbriche, and the factories were under the control and possession of the monarchs: it is also evident that the tower was semi -destroyed, and the furnace and the warehouses not in use anymore. While the church and sacristy, with a cemetery never mentioned before, were still intact at that time. Nowadays not much is left of the tower, built with the bricks of the local furnace, and delimited at the top by a ridge in stone: anything else had been demolished and badly rebuilt in more recent times.
The tower is called of the Trap ( Trappola) because in the little cove which formed the mouth of the river it was habit to take. |
