8

Torre Ruffa

In the modern era, between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the terror unleashed by the Ottoman Empire over the Spanish power, forced the latter to fortify the places under its influence.

In the 1532, was drawn up a defense plan for the coasts of the whole territory of the Kingdom of Naples, Don Pedro with the construction of 366 towers that constituted the defensive line almost 2,200 km long, extended from Gaeta to San Benedetto del Tronto.

The coastal towers of the Capo Vaticano district were built according to that original plan. Today, about these fortifications of the territory in Ricadi: The tower of Saint Maria Lauretana was abandoned and then destroyed during the Napoleonic occupation of 1806, The Tower Baticano or Vatican, on the promontory now called Torre Santa Maria, collapsed in the 50s of the last centuries for the removal of the stones at the base used as material for examination; the Balì Tower or Gisotta in Santa Domenica is today only a ruin.

The Ruffa Tower is still existing, and it was built last so that the Code Carratelli, an atlas of all the coastal towers of Calabria of the late sixteenth century, still depicts it in construction.