The tower of the castle of Fava has a square plan of seven metres per side and twenty metres high and nowadays may be accessed through an iron ladder leading to a door with a rounded stone arch (fig. 1).

In the past the entrance to the tower was probably available through a wooden or rope ladder. The main access to the tower is placed at a higher level than the ground: thanks to this expedient, it was not directly accessible and its defensive potential was increased. The tower has been restored twice in the 1960s and 1980s; the works made it possible for the public to visit the monument, which was in a state of neglect up until the conservation interventions.

Fig. 1 - Main entrance to the tower, east side (photo by Unicity S.p.A.).

The wall structure of the tower is characterised by parallel lines of local limestone square blocks of similar sizes to one another (fig. 2); the corners are strengthened by larger blocks, in some cases the outer face is ashlar-worked (fig. 3). The tower unwinds over three different floors, each of which is slightly smaller than the one below. This slight taper is noticeable in the external wall facings, where a kind of cutaway is visible in correspondence with the change of floor (fig. 4). Outside, holes for housing the beams of the scaffold are also visible; this surrounded the tower when it was under construction: some of these holes have been closed with bricks..

Fig. 2 - Detail of the tower’s wall structure: rows of local square stone blocks (photo by Unicity S.p.A.).

Fig. 3 - Stone blocks used as cornerstones, some of which are ashlar-worked (photo by Unicity S.p.A.).

Fig. 4 - The north side of the tower where the curtain wall shows the offsets which mark the three floors of the building (photo by Unicity S.p.A).

Inside, the tower is divided into three floors, which may be accessed by steep wooden stairs. The walls have various types of openings: slits on the sides not facing the sea and posterns for controlling the surrounding area by the garrison which resided here. On the side of the tower which overlooks the coast, perfectly in line, a rounded arch window and a narrow slit are visible, profiled by bricks and probably opened after the construction of the tower (figs. 5-6-7).

Fig. 5 - Main facade of the tower; you can see the aligned openings (photo by Unicity S.p.A.).

Fig. 6 - The tower, view from the Northeast corner, with the various openings to the north and east (photo by Unicity S.p.A.).

Fig. 7 - South side of the tower, where two loopholes are visible (photo by Unicity S.p.A).