Torre Troyana, Medieval tower in Piazza Medici, Asti, Italy.

Torre Troyana is a 44-metre tower with a square plan and 5.90-metre sides, standing beside the Palazzo Ducale on piazza Medici in Asti's Rione San Secondo. Its smooth shaft ends in three bands framed by stone cornices, each side opening onto wide double-arched windows. Above the swallowtail Ghibelline merlons sits a projecting metal pinnacle covering the working clock.

The Troya family of bankers started building it in the late 1100s and finished between 1260 and 1280. It was one of many defensive towers that wealthy families constructed during the medieval period to protect their interests and show their status.

Asti once had about 120 family towers, of which several survive; the Troya, a banking family, took over this unfinished one and crowned it with swallowtail merlons between 1260 and 1280. The bell, cast in 1531, was made from the iron of a cannon, as its Latin inscription states. In the 19th century it marked the hours, the night retreat and the opening of schools.

The tower stands on Piazza Medici beside the Palazzo Ducale, in the San Secondo district, and is part of the Castelli Aperti circuit of Lower Piedmont. It is a civic tower with no lift and no public observation deck; the clock and the bell chamber sit at the top of the 44-metre shaft. Visit on foot from the surrounding streets, where the Ghibelline merlons and the metal pinnacle are best seen from below.

The bell inside dates from 1531 and ranks among the oldest still-ringing bells in the Piedmont region. Hearing it toll connects you to nearly 5 centuries of the city's daily rhythm and local memory.