CAMPANILE

CAMPANILE. - A freestanding structure or one incorporated into a church, designed to hold bells at a suitable height for optimal sound projection. When the use of bells spread (7th–9th centuries), appropriate structures were erected to accommodate them.

**Canonical Law.** - The *Codex Iuris Canonici* (can. 1169) requires that every church and public oratory be equipped with one or more bells; however, there are no prescriptions regarding the construction of bell towers, so long as the desired effect is achieved. In each church, bells may be placed in the manner deemed most suitable.

St. Charles Borromeo, in his *Ornatus ecclesiae* (ch. 8), stipulates that the doors of the bell tower be guarded and kept closed to prevent misuse of the bells, as they are sacred objects. He also finds it advisable (*Instructio fabricae ecclesiae*, ch. 56) that a clock be placed on the church tower to mark the hours.

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**Art.** - While the Ravenna examples of the bell towers of S. Apollinare Nuovo and S. Apollinare in Classe (not coeval with the churches) are cylindrical towers with openings that widen toward the top, the earliest Roman examples built at St. Peter’s by Stephen III and Hadrian I were already square in plan. One of the oldest bell towers in Italy is that of S. Satiro in Milan (9th century), which already displays the Lombard type of superimposed cubes with hanging arches. This type developed in Romanesque architecture into a great variety of forms according to region and the church’s layout. For the Lombard variety, one may cite, in addition to the two towers of S. Ambrogio in Milan, that of the cathedral of Modena.

In Venice and its dependencies, bell towers are generally tall and without openings, often crowned near the bell chamber by a polyphora; sometimes they terminate in an octagonal shape. The bell tower of Pisa, with its superimposed loggias and circular plan, acquires a distinctive character, further emphasized by its unintended tilt due to subsidence.

The bell towers of the Roman region follow the Lombard model, but in them the stacking of cubes is accentuated by brick cornices with marble brackets. Coloristic effects are achieved through the use of majolica bowls and the warm tone of the bricks employed.

The bell towers of Gaeta, Amalfi, Caserta, and generally those of the coastal zone feature a perforated arch at the base, are encircled by small arcades of Arabesque type, and terminate in a cylindrical form. Such influences from the Muslim world are even more evident in Sicily, as seen in S. Giovanni degli Eremiti or in the Martorana in Palermo; the arrangement of the two bell towers flanking the façade of the cathedral of Cefalù, however, is due to Norman influence.

In Apulia, the deformation of Lombard prototypes is especially evident in the shape of the openings. The large paired towers already in use in German and French Romanesque buildings gain height in Gothic cathedrals; this type, however, did not find favor in Italy. The bell tower of S. Gottardo in Milan has a notable upward thrust, accentuated by its polygonal section, but essentially, as in the 14th-century terminations of others in Crema, Cremona, Lodi, etc., the Lombard formula remains almost unchanged.

The bell tower of Florence Cathedral, though buttressed at the corners and opened high into airy windows, maintains a surface treatment accentuated by its polychrome cladding, which contrasts with the northern principle of eliminating inert masses.

In the early Renaissance, late-Gothic forms persisted everywhere, or a return to simpler aspects emerged, in which the stacking of planes remained clearly defined. At the beginning of the 16th century, Bramante intended to frame the mass of the basilica of St. Peter’s between four bell towers of large superimposed cubes; the superimposition of architectural orders and the arrangement of the four towers finds immediate reflection in the cathedral of Montefiascone by Sammicheli, in S. Biagio in Montepulciano (though only one was built), and in S. Maria di Carignano in Genoa by Alessi, where, however, the bases are not distinct and the termination is lightened with local characteristics.

During the transition to the Baroque, the bell tower became enriched with various elements, particularly in its termination. The two bell towers of St. Peter’s by Bernini, with their chamfered and concave corners, free-standing columns, and walls reduced to a minimum, were bold and novel creations; those by Borromini at S. Agnese in Piazza Navona are even more restless in their convex lines, restrained by rigid framing.

The greatest expression of Baroque freedom in bell towers is represented by that of S. Andrea delle Fratte, soaring toward the sky with caryatids in the upper order. More traditional in form are those by Longhena at S. Maria della Salute in Venice or by Juvarra at Superga, designed to frame the dome in a recessed plane, reversing Borromini’s relationship at S. Agnese.

After some elegant assertions of the 18th-century *barocchetto* still Borrominian in spirit, the bell tower found no favor in the Neoclassical age, and in the eclectic period it repeated earlier motifs, as in S. Maria Ausiliatrice in Turin, or drew inspiration from Romanesque and Renaissance styles in the works of Vespignani and Carimini.

In the modern age, the bell tower, particularly benefiting from new construction systems, has shed its traditional decorations and asserted itself through its massing, often flanking and framing the façade, or sometimes inserted at its center.

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