Torre Mozza (Torre Grimani)

Beside Rovigo's famous leaning keep, a second tower outlasted the castle: Torre Mozza, known to the family who later held it as Torre Grimani. Recorded by the city portal among the survivors of the medieval fortress, it anchors the castle garden on Piazza Matteotti and today serves heritage volunteers rather than archers.

Why it matters

A fortress that once counted eight towers leaves few heirs, and the municipal portal names exactly two: Torre Donà and Torre Grimani, "detta Torre Mozza". That makes this tower half of the only surviving pair of the castle founded after the papal authorization of 920. It also shows a different fate for a medieval defence: while its tall neighbour became a monument, this one was absorbed into ordinary civic life, illustrating how Rovigo turned a fortress into a city.

What to notice

The keep catalogued separately as the Donà tower rises in one long brick shaft, while the Mozza is the lower, squarely ended member of the pair. Remnants of the crenellated curtain wall run through the green space of Piazza Matteotti, fragments the official page counts among what the castle has left. The tower's brick fabric preserves traces of the old wall-walk levels beside later buildings pressed against the circuit.

Context and history

The tower belongs to the castle story that begins in 920, when Pope John X authorized the bishop of Adria to build a stronghold by the Adige waterway; under the Este lords the complex grew to its full ring of walls, eight towers, a central keep and a moat with two drawbridges, a layout the local sources place in its accomplished form by the twelfth century. Of that circuit, only the keep, this tower and stretches of wall survived the town's growth.

The building's modern names trace its passage between private hands. After the Donà family, owners of the property from 1598, the tower passed to the Grimani, whose surname it has carried since the mid-nineteenth century according to the local historical source consulted. The parallel name "Mozza" — attached to it by the official portal itself — stuck alongside; the sources fetched do not explain the nickname's origin, and no etymology is offered here. Its most recent recorded role is civilian again: the secondary local source reports the tower now houses the volunteer group for cultural heritage of the CTG, which keeps the old defence in daily use.