Rome. Twenty years of neglect were enough to undermine the stability of a tower which had stood proudly near the imperial forums and the Colosseum for around ten centuries. On November 3, the Torre dei Conti partially collapsed during restoration work, causing the death of a worker. The beginning of the construction of this rare testimony of medieval Rome that has come down to us dates back to the 9th century on the foundations of one of the temples of the Peace Forum of the ancient city. But it was really erected from 1203 by the powerful Conti di Segni family, who gave several popes to the Church, the most famous of which was Innocent III (1198-1216). At the time of its splendor, the monument dominated the city with its height of almost 60 meters compared to 29 currently. Rome bristled at the time with towers which symbolized the feudal power of the great noble families. The Torre dei Conti is the highest. Several earthquakes damaged it over the centuries, particularly that of 1348 which made it uninhabitable. However, the poet Petrarch did not stop admiring her, describing her as “turris illa toto unica orb” (unique tour in the world). After restructuring work carried out under Pope Alexander VIII at the end of the 17th century (marked by the construction of two buttresses), the immediate environment of the tower was profoundly modified. The opening of two major arteries, Via Cavour (at the end of the 19th century) and Via dei Fori Imperiali under fascism, isolated the tower from neighboring buildings. In 1937, Mussolini gave it to the Arditi d’Italia National Federation, which occupied it until 1943. The following year, in 1938, one of its rooms was transformed into a mausoleum for General Alessandro Parisi where the remains still rest, preserved in a Roman sarcophagus. After serving as headquarters and offices for the Archaeological Superintendency of Rome, the building ceased all administrative use in the early 2000s, before being completely closed in 2007.
Lack of maintenance
This abandonment for almost two decades has caused significant degradation denounced by specialists who are then alarmed by critical structural problems, due to aging, historical seismic damage and, more recently, the lack of maintenance. Faced with this situation of disrepair, a major requalification plan has been launched worth 6.9 million euros financed by the Caput Mundi investment program. Before the accident, he planned a complete restoration of the building to transform it into a cultural and museum center accessible to the public. In addition to consolidating the structure damaged by time, invasive vegetation and acts of vandalism, the municipality of Rome wanted to transform the interior spaces into exhibition spaces on the city’s medieval past as well as reception and information places for tourists.
An investigation was opened to determine the precise causes of the disaster in order to establish whether it was caused by an undetected structural defect or an execution error during the work. The debate is relaunched on the state of conservation of Italian heritage and the requirement for technical expertise and security protocols, which are not always scrupulously respected.
Rome restores its heritage as Jubilee 2025 approaches
The Caput Mundi plan, financed by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), resulting from the European recovery plan of which Italy is the main beneficiary, is a 500 million euro initiative. Its objective is to make Rome’s tourist and cultural offer more competitive and sustainable, by improving accessibility, the quality of services, and by relieving the central areas most frequented by tourists in view of the 2025 Jubilee. No less than 335 interventions have been included in the framework of the Caput Mundi plan which concerns 283 archaeological, cultural and urban sites. The municipality announced that it had respected the EU’s intermediate objectives set for December 31, 2024, in particular that of having reached 50% progress of work for at least 100 sites included in the plan whose deadline was set for summer 2026. The sites concerned are extremely diverse, ranging from major monuments in the historic center to lesser-known sites and peripheral infrastructures, but also to 30 historic parks and gardens. Among the most emblematic projects were the statues of the Dioscuri of the Capitol, the restoration of which was completed at the end of May 2025, but also the restoration of certain parts of the Villa Borghese still in progress, the development of pedestrian connections and elevators to improve the visit to the Forums of Peace, Nerva, Augustus and Trajan or even restoration and consolidation work on funerary monuments along the Appia Antica. Without forgetting the fountains in the historic squares of Rome: those of Farnese Square, Trevi or even the Four Rivers on Navona Square.
