Tour de Ville

Description

A small agglomeration of buildings from the most diverse eras, in the present-day village of Arnad, conceals within it a mighty wall structure that is now completely defunct. The Tour de Ville, in its first centuries of life, must have been completely isolated and perhaps surrounded by a small wall, which one cannot exclude was initially made of wood. Situated on the upper edge of a large, intensely cultivated cone, it was not defended by natural relief, so that it could not be considered a real military garrison. Its function was strategically aimed at legitimising the appurtenances of a large agricultural area that guaranteed conspicuous rents.

In 13th-century documents, it is already referred to as turris de plano Arnadi, to emphasise the particular morphological conformation in which it was located.

Of the original structure, only a portion of the three-storey elevation is preserved, with some embrasures, a latrine and the entrance door characterised by an architrave surmounted by a blind arch, a type common to many towers of this period. There are, in fact, many similarities both in structure and proportions with towers such as La Plantaz or the Tour de l'Archet, testifying to the use of a construction model taken as a reference by many families who, between the 12th and 13th centuries, saw their economic growth, but also their political influence, within the military aristocracy. In 1239, the tower belonged to the Vallaise family, which recent archival investigations would suggest derived from the older De Arnado family to which the tower may have originally belonged when the family began to take possession of those territories. Even at the end of the 15th century, numerous wills of the Vallaise family were dictated in the nucleus of buildings surrounding the tower.