ARCHITECT, Italian
(active 12th and 13th centuries in Tuscany)

Residential towers

12th-13th centuries
Photo
San Gimignano (Tuscany)

The nobility of the Romanesque Italian cities imported the rustic castle and tower forms of the rural lords and adapted them to entire blocks or sectors of towns. San Gimignano provides an example of how most Romanesque Italian cities would have looked, with towers constructed by both the nobility and by powerful merchants emulating them.