Torre Comentina

Asti once had many tower houses built by rival families; only a handful survive. Torre Comentina rises 38.55 metres at Piazza Roma and Corso Alfieri, making it the city's second-tallest civil tower and one of the few still at its original medieval height.

Why it matters

The tower is a document of the age when noble families competed to build higher, and the commune pushed back. Asti capped tower heights at about forty metres, and Comentina stops just short of the limit at 38.55 metres, on a square base 3.4 metres to a side. Built in the second half of the thirteenth century in the Piedmont Gothic manner, it retains the full vertical scheme that most surviving Asti towers have lost: single windows on all four faces of its smooth square shaft, a double order of small arches alternating brick and sandstone beneath the top, and swallow-tailed Ghibelline battlements. Because it was never truncated, the tower preserves the crowning elements of these structures as a legible example of medieval design.

What to notice

Later buildings partly enclose the tower. Its shaft has numerous single windows, consistent with a residential tower-house as well as a defensive structure. Two bands of small arches near the top alternate terracotta and sandstone, beneath Ghibelline swallowtail merlons. The tower adjoins the neo-Gothic Palazzo Medici del Vascello, built after the church of San Bernardino was demolished in 1897.

Context and history

For centuries the tower was known as the Torre di San Bernardino, because it served as the bell tower of the church of that name beside it; that church made way for Palazzo Medici del Vascello, which remains privately owned by the family's descendants. Historical studies — Gabiani attributed the tower to the Comentina family, while the more recent studies collected by Bera favour the Gardino — connect the structure with powerful Ghibelline families who were lords of Mongardino and Monale, and the square at its foot was long called Piazza dei Gardino. The tower had a second civic life tied to the Palio: when the race was run "alla lunga", along the length of the old Contrada Maestra — today's Corso Alfieri — the tower served as a command post for the event. Its preservation is exceptional: together with Torre Troyana it is one of only two towers in Asti to have survived intact.