Why we asked Google to delete Torre Mattarelle

In short: Torre Mattarelle, the watchtower built between 1567 and 1569 on the coast south of Brindisi, is gone: its last wall collapsed at the end of August 2026, after decades of erosion. We have asked Google to remove its pin from the map. Here is why, and what we have lost.

We have just asked Google to delete Torre Mattarelle from its maps. It is not spite and it is not a provocation. Every time we open Maps, scroll along the coast south of Brindisi and try to imagine a different city, that red pin reminds us of something that no longer exists. And it hurts.

What Torre Mattarelle was

It was a watchtower, one of the many the Kingdom of Naples built along the coast of Puglia to defend itself against raids from the sea. It stood on a small headland, Punta Mattarelle, between Cerano and the salt marshes of Punta della Contessa, now part of the Salina di Punta della Contessa regional nature park.

Archive records even tell us who built it. In 1567 the Brindisi master mason Virgilio Pugliese was paid 100 ducats «for building the tower of Matrelle»; in 1569 Giovanni Parise received another 104 to carry on the work. In the following centuries, repairs were the job of the Università di Brindisi, the town council of the time.

Its shape was the classic one of the coastal towers of Salento: a square plan shaped like a truncated pyramid, with walls sloping on the outside and straight on the inside, in local stone. There was even a water cistern built into the thickness of the wall. From the top, soldiers watched the sea and, if they spotted a suspicious ship, raised the alarm with fire and smoke to the neighbouring towers: Torre Cavallo to the north and Torre San Gennaro to the south. A chain of lookouts that held the coast together.

A death foretold

The tower did not fall all of a sudden. For decades the sea wore away the cliff it stood on: as early as the 1980s erosion brought down the ground beneath the tower, and most of the structure with it. In recent years only a piece of the north-west corner was still standing, abandoned by the sea.

Between 25 and 26 August 2026 the ground gave way again, and that last wall came down too. The first to notice was the photographer Raffaele Capone, known as the «Falcon of Puglia», who commented bitterly: «Now you can take down the road signs».

Why we say it could have been avoided

Erosion is a natural process, but it is not fate. It can be studied, it can be slowed down, cliffs can be reinforced and what stands on them can be made safe. For Torre Mattarelle none of this happened. For forty years we watched it lose pieces, and nobody, neither the authorities nor us citizens, managed to insist that this stretch of coast be protected. Before money, what was missing was the will.

And it is not the only one. Torre Cavallo, its neighbour to the north, no longer exists. Of Torre San Gennaro, to the south, only a ruin under the sea remains. With Mattarelle, the last coastal tower on the shore south of Brindisi is gone.

Why take it off the map

Some will say that deleting it from Google Maps means deleting its memory. We think the opposite. A pin that leads to a heap of stones by the sea is not memory: it is a reminder of what we failed to do. We want to keep its memory here, with its story, the names of those who built it and a photo of how it used to be.

And we want to keep that memory alive for the towers that are still standing. On the coast north of the city there are still Torre Testa and Torre Guaceto, and most of the towers around Brindisi are in poor condition. If you are in the area, go and see them, photograph them, talk about them: it is the simplest way to remind everyone that they exist, before they become another pin to delete.