Margana Tower (or dei Margani)

In the charming and quiet little square where the Margana Tower stands, a stone’s throw from the Capitol Hill and the busy Piazza Venezia, time seems to stand still. Like the small square with its evocative ancient atmosphere, the tower is named after the noble Margani family, whose origins date back to the 12th century, a time when towers were still a symbol of prestige and power and the city appeared to the eyes of its visitors with a peculiar hedgehog look.

Depicted in the 19th-century watercolors by Ettore Roesler Franz, whose works give us an image of the city before the great urban transformations of the 20th century, the tower incorporates remains of an ancient Roman portico and is part of a building complex that was developed between the 14th and 16th centuries. As we know, in 1305 Giovanni Margani came into possession of the ancient tower and began to build his own residence around it. In the courtyard on the right are visible the remains of a large loggia built in the 15th century; the building was later enlarged with the addition of a 16th-century portal.

Today tower and palace are about the same height but, as in other cases, the tower was originally much taller. The column with an Ionic capital set into the masonry probably belonged to the Roman portico; also of Roman date would be the two fragments visible between the entrance door and the window, one with an eagle and the other with a floral motif, and the frieze that borders the portal of the lower adjoining building. Chronicles tell that just opposite the tower entrance, on an evening in 1480, Pietro Margani was killed by Prospero Santacroce in a medieval feud between the two Roman families that characterized the entire century.