The Torretto District

The actual Torretto district owes its name to the memory of a small tower that still stood there, in the second half of the XIX century, in the stretch of water more or less where the port harbour master’s office now stands. Almost isolated on a rock, the small tower was originally a watermill, quite similar to the remains of those still standing at Campiglia and Porto Venere, but its original purpose has been lost with time. It was certainly such a special coastal landmark that the district just outside the Porta Romana gateway, that is from what is now piazza del Bastione up to piazza Verdi, was actually called the Torretto suburb after it.
There are many illustrated documents showing what this little tower used to look like, starting from the numerous paintings by Agostino Fossati illustrating the landscape which included the old watermill and others illustrating the monument itself in detail, both from the inside and the outside. In addition there are some prints and photographs such as the one kept in the La Spezia civic photographic archives, showing the hill known as Cappuccini or Ferrara hill, where the mansions belonging to the Countess of Castiglione and the great convent rising above the sea stand out against the sky and lower down the houses of the suburb amongst which you can see the small tower itself towards the shoreline.
In the second half of the XIX century the Countess of Castiglione in fact wanted to have her private bathing establishment near to the old watermill, in contact and adjoining the estate belonging to the Oldoini, the family she came from: the little tower, already abandoned and with its foundations eroded for some time now, thus became the romantic backdrop to the divine countess’ swims in the sea.
In actual fact the ancient suburb gravitating in this area was already undergoing vast transformations in that period, as it was included in the expansion of a growing city: from a suburb, that is a group of houses outside the city walls, it was becoming a city district, slowly but surely undergoing transformation. The first signs began to show around the middle of the XIX century, still before the vast Royal Naval Arsenal construction site began, when two large buildings were built outside the gateway to the city: the civic theatre and the Croce di Malta hotel, now head office of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio della Spezia foundation, as already mentioned. The Torretto houses are progressively swept away since this date on until Cappuccini hill was demolished in the 20’s of the new century to make room for piazza Europa. The same thing happened to the religious centres, starting with the Capuchin convent already requisitioned for military purposes and then entirely destroyed, and also St. Gotthard’s church, a chapel standing on the slopes of Ferrara hill.
The landscape completely changes, with geographical changes to its coastline and even to the hills behind. The land reclaimed from the sea using the soil excavated from the Arsenal docks, hills demolished to make room for the increasing urban expansion, new roads and squares built, all go to relentlessly change the site and replace the ancient houses, now totally lost.