The Torre Muzza, also called Torrazza, is a coastal defence tower at Piraineto, a hamlet of Carini: it was part of the system of coastal towers of Sicily, built to sight Saracen ships. It does not appear in the surveys of the royal architect Tiburzio Spannocchi, of 1578, nor in those of Camillo Camilliani, made after 1583: it was built later, and the first military map showing it as already existing is of 1677.
What to see
Today it is entirely in ruins, but the remains are still imposing. In a survey of the early seventies the base, then intact, was measured at eighteen metres: it was one of the largest towers of the system, and the popular name Torrazza perhaps comes from that.
The tower was in visual contact, to the east, with the two towers of Isola delle Femmine and, to the west, with the Pozzillo tower and that of the tonnara dell'Ursa.
Visiting
In the early seventies the tower stood on private land; after visits in 1976 the scholars Mazzarella and Zanca described it as by then almost entirely ruined. Access and the condition of the remains should be checked on the spot.
Our editors' tip
It was not among the forty-five towers managed directly by the Deputazione del Regno, yet in 1809 it was the Deputazione itself that wrote to the prince of Carini to complain of its decay. A map of the Bourbon army still shows it in 1823, and in 1867 it ended up on the list of military works to be decommissioned. The road leading to the remains is now called via Torre di Ulisse, after the fanciful name given in the nineties to the sign of a restaurant.
