Genoese tower
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As a Genoese tower that on the coast are Corsica distributed round towers called the mid-16th century by the Genoese against the North African Muslim pirates were built. They added a number of angular towers previously erected by the Pisans , but also built this shape (e.g. Tour de Nonza ).
Of the 150 structures that made up the Torregiana , 67 still stand on the coast of Corsica today. The individual towers had visual contact with each other, and the crews communicated by optical signals . The tower at Pointe Mortella withstood a siege by the British Navy for three days in 1794 before the 38-man crew had to surrender.
variants
The surprisingly successful defense of the tower was the model for the construction of similar structures in Menorca as well as on Guernsey , the Orkneys , England , Ireland , Canada and South Africa , which the British government had erected under the mutated name Martello Towers up to 1814 .
The model was also adopted in France at the end of the 18th century and used to expand a nationwide network for optical telegraphy purposes ( Chappe telegraph ).
Others
Probably the most famous tower of the English version of the Genoese towers is the Martello Tower in Sandycove , Dún Laoghaire near Dublin , built in 1804, where James Joyce lived for a week a hundred years later, which is described in the first chapter of his novel Ulysses . The tower now houses a Joyce Museum.
