Torre Muzza, Coastal defense tower in Piraineto, Italy
Torre Muzza, also called Torrazza, is a ruined coastal defence tower in the Piraineto area of Carini, Sicily. Its surviving base measured 18 linear metres in the early 1970s, making it one of the largest towers in the island's defensive system. It stood in visual contact with the two towers of Isola delle Femmine to the east and with Torre Pozzillo and the Torre della Tonnara dell'Ursa to the west.
The tower was designed following surveys by royal architect Tiburzio Spannocchi in 1578, then expanded by Camillo Camilliani afterward. It was later documented in military maps from 1677 and recognized as a critical defensive point for the region.
Locals also call it Torrazza, a name tied to its size: the intact base measured 18 metres. In the 1990s a restaurant nearby used the sign "Torre di Ulisse", and the road to the ruins is now Via Torre di Ulisse in Carini's street register.
The ruins stand on private land in the Piraineto locality of Carini, so the remains are seen from outside rather than entered. The lane leading to them is now named via Torre di Ulisse after a former restaurant sign. Access is on foot over unpaved ground, and the tower is almost entirely collapsed.
In 2018, researchers of the CE.R.CA.MI. census run by the Palermo Pillbox Finders found the remains of an Italian Second World War military post that had slid down from the top of the tower when it collapsed. The find shows that some sixteenth-century towers were used as observation and coastal defence points by the Royal Army in the 1940s.
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