Martello Towers: fortificazioni britanniche sulle coste siciliane

Between 1806 and 1815, Sicily experienced a significant British presence, consisting of merchants, politicians, and particularly military forces. The island served as a critical strategic hub, useful to evade the Continental Blockade imposed by Napoleon against Britain. The military and socio-cultural conditions that developed during this decade not only politically influenced the island's affairs, culminating in the drafting of a Sicilian Constitution shaped after the English system in 1812, but also left behind a defensive infrastructure marked by a distinctive type of tower known as the Martello Tower. These structures, whose name likely derives from a misinterpretation by a British General of the "Torre della Mortella" in Corsica, were constructed by the Royal Engineers with the purpose of defending the island from a potential and feared assault by French imperial troops, who posed a threat of landing on Sicily's shores. This study aims to critically analyse and compare various cartographic, iconographic, literary, and travel-related sources, both Italian and foreign, regarding the origins of the Martello Towers and the historical context of the British defensive system in Sicily. Remarkably, these towers, of which four examples still remain and are now integral parts of the Sicilian coastal landscape, were never actually needed for their intended purpose. Some were newly built, while others were adapted structures, representing the surviving, yet underexplored, military traces of this brief chapter in Sicilian history.