The Torrione della Coscia, known in Alassio as the Torrione Saraceno, is a cylinder of masonry planted at the eastern edge of town, in the Borgo Coscia district. The Republic of Genoa put it up in the sixteenth century as part of the network of coastal towers meant to give seaside communities time to notice the wrong sail on the horizon: Turkish and Barbary piracy was a fixed feature of daily life in that century. Between 1521 and 1557 Alassio closed itself behind a wall that ended up ringing the whole town, with bastions and towers set where the defences were weakest; Borgo Coscia, to the east, was left outside the main circuit and entrusted to just two towers.
What to see
The plan is circular and the masonry solid: a choice Ligurian builders repeated all along the western Riviera for two very practical reasons, to take a hit and to see a long way. From this eastern flank they watched the stretch of sea the raids came from, and raised the alarm in time for the borgo to shut itself in. Today the tower is absorbed into the seafront terrace, and the contrast is what strikes you most: sixteenth-century military stone among holiday façades, with the beach umbrellas a few metres away.
Since the middle of the twentieth century it has been private property, and there is no going in. It is still the most legible piece of Alassio's defensive system, most of which has vanished: the eastern moat, the “fossao de li roxotti”, is now the Rio Cardellino, and the Bastione di Piazza was pulled down to make room for the promenade itself. The Republic of Genoa formally took control of Alassio on 23 and 24 January 1540, setting up its podesteria; the walls were only finished in 1557.
Visiting
You can only get here on foot, which is the right way. The centre is crossed by the Budello, the paved pedestrian lane running parallel to the beach: take it and follow it east until you come out on the seafront at Borgo Coscia. There are no opening hours, tickets or guided tours, because the building is lived in: you look at the tower from outside and walk around it in two minutes. Early in the morning the seafront is still empty and the masonry photographs cleanly, with no chairs and umbrellas in front of it; in summer, after ten, the area is another thing entirely.
Our editors' tip
We come back in the last hour of daylight, and once we have looked at the tower we turn our backs on the sea. Behind the town rises Monte Bignone, 523 metres of rock and footpaths: it is the last point the sun lights when it goes down over Alassio. Coffee in hand, you watch the shadow line climb the slope until only the summit is still burning. Then back into the Budello, which by that hour is starting to fill up.