Two raised doors open on the north side, one five metres above the ground and the other eight: two doors like these, certainly built with the tower, exist in no other building in the Aosta Valley. They were reached from wooden balconies, whose beam holes survive, probably linked by a removable ladder.
What to see
The tower is a square block of stone, ten and a half metres on each side and fourteen and a half high, over three floors that have collapsed inside. It has no windows, only arrow slits on the east, west and south faces, splayed towards the interior and built with tuff wedges. The walls are 2.60 metres thick at the base and taper to 2.15: expertly laid, they still stand plumb. Scholars such as André Zanotto find parallels with the tour de l'Archet at Morgex and the tower of Ville at Arnad, and explain all that mass by the position: down here on the flat there were no natural defences to rely on.
Visiting
The tower is a ruin and cannot be entered because of the risk of collapse: you look at it from outside, on the plain between Gressan and Jovençan, five minutes on foot from the castle of Tour de Villa. The sources argue about its date: some make it eleventh-century, others twelfth, the work of the De Plantata, the family that gave it its name. After them it went to the Bardonanche, then the Vallaise, and in 1886 to the Impérial of Gressan, who own it still.
Our editors' tip
Some have wanted to see a Roman tower here, because of the resemblance to the walls of Augusta Praetoria: the idea has never been confirmed, but it gives the measure of how unusual the building is. Worth the walk from the castle, not a trip of its own.