The doorway is not at ground level: it opens high up the wall, because a watchtower was climbed into, not walked into. It is the detail that says most about the pentagonal tower of Vezzano Inferiore, raised in the twelfth century outside the village walls, about 15 metres tall, its arrow slits still in place and once joined to the castle by a wooden bridge seven metres above the ground.
What to see
The plan is pentagonal, an unusual choice and anything but decorative: the angles deflect blows and widen the field of view. Inside, the tower is divided into several floors; outside, the loopholes run along the faces and the door stays suspended, reachable only by ladder or from the bridge. This was a machine for defence and for watching: from the top the whole valley below was kept under observation, and the fact that it was built beyond the walls says it was meant to see far rather than to sit safe.
The castle it was attached to fared differently: of the fortress only a few remains survive, while the tower is still in good condition. That castle, the old stronghold of the village dating back to the tenth century and once held by the Malaspina, was rebuilt in the eighteenth century and is today Palazzo Giustiniani, with fragments of the old medieval walls; the name comes from the marriage celebrated in 1832 between the marquis Pietro Giustiniani and the countess Teresa Picedi, the last link in a chain of owners that begins with the Lords of Vezzano and runs through the Ottaviani, De Nobili, Malaspina and Picedi families.
Visiting
Vezzano Inferiore has a ring-shaped street plan: you walk around the core and come back to where you started, and the tower appears and disappears between the houses at every bend. You enter the village under the Arco di San Giorgio, a pointed-arch gate of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The railway station, on the Genoa-Rome and Parma-La Spezia lines, lies downhill from the old centre; by car, leave the A15 between Santo Stefano di Magra and La Spezia, then climb. Going round the village shows the tower from several sides, but the right spot is from below, to take in how high that door sits.
Our editors' tip
We go into the parish church of Santi Sebastiano e Maria Assunta first, from the first half of the seventeenth century: on the second altar of the left aisle stands a Pietà carved by the Genoese Anton Maria Maragliano. And if we get to pick the date, we come in September, when the Palio dei Rioni Vezzanesi is run and the village splits into teams. Then we keep half an hour for the climb up to Vezzano Superiore: of the other castle only ruins are left up there, and the comparison does the tower justice.