How To Climb Torre del Mangia in Siena — ALONG DUSTY ROADS

A Brief History of The Tower of Mangia 

If you haven’t been to Italy before, you’ll quickly learn that medieval Italians absolutely bloody loved a tower – and not just those of the leaning variety in Pisa. Usually built by powerful families, the higher the tower, the wealthier the status you’d project (hello Trump Tower!), but many of the structures didn’t survive to the present day.

Torre del Mangia is actually quite exceptional in this regard, in that it was a civic rather than a feudal structure, built with a distinct aim to underscore a balance of power between government and church, rather than assert the dominance or power of a single family in a region.

Works started in 1338, and the tower was built in just a decade to the designs of two architect brothers (Muccio and Francesco Di Rinaldo). Part of the Palazzo Publico town hall, it dominates Siena’s large, main square – the Piazza del Campo – and has come to be as much a symbol of the city as its famous annual horserace and beautiful cathedral.

Standing beneath it, it really is quite remarkable how it was built that long ago, and how it has stood this long (especially following a disastrous earthquake in 1798).

You will read few different versions of its official height though, and it’s all to do with a lighting rod.

With it, the tower reaches 102-metre / 334-feet figure at its tip, topping it up quite a bit from the 87-metre mark it reaches without it! This makes it only the fourth tallest historic tower in Italy, with Torrazzo of Cremona (112m), Bologna’s leaning Torre degli Asinelli (97.2m), and the Arnolfo Tower of Florence (94m) all topping it. Interestingly, it is technically a taller structure than the Cathedral’s bellower, but they reach the same height due to the latter standing on a slight hill.

You see? The height of a tower really did mean a lot to Italians.

Beyond the secular aims of the architecture and obsession with heights, the most curious piece of history relates to how the civic tower got its name.

Giovanni di Balduccio was one of the tower’s first bell ringers, and gained a reputation as a man who wasted all his wages on good food. This led to the nickname of Mangiaguadagni – the earnings eater – which was abbreviated down to Mangia.

Now, Signor di Balduccio not only had an approach which we can fully get behind, but also fully understand given that Italian food is the best in the world. Most importantly, he also seemed to get the last laugh with his mocking nickname attached to most famous landmark of Siena for an eternity.

Good food, a reputation, and going down in local history for ever; perhaps it was all money well-spent after all!

*we’ve looked and looked but can’t actually find out what the tower was called BEFORE Giovanni’s habits became widespread local knowledge and the nickname stuck.