Tower II forms part of Pompeii’s fortifications and stands along the southern sector of the city walls, just west of Nocera Gate. The tower stood on the edge of the volcanic plateau on which the city was built and commanded a stretch of the walls facing the plain below.
The construction of the towers formed part of the major strengthening of Pompeii’s defences in the early 1st century BC, shortly before the siege conducted by the Roman troops of Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 89 BC. Research on the fortifications has associated this phase with the construction of twelve towers in opus incertum, intended particularly to reinforce the sectors of the circuit most vulnerable to attack.
The towers of Pompeii’s defensive system were originally structures with several levels. Reconstruction studies generally indicate three storeys, supported by barrel vaults and linked by internal staircases. Side doorways provided access to the wall walk, while a small postern opening outside the city was normally present on the lowest level.
What survives of Tower II today is mainly its lowest level, consisting of a large vaulted chamber. The visible structure nevertheless shows numerous alterations and repairs, some ancient and others modern, which make its masonry particularly interesting to examine. The ancient fabric preserves opus incertum combined with brickwork at the corners and junctions.
The presence of these brickwork repairs has led to the suggestion that the tower was extensively altered after Sulla’s siege of 89 BC, when Pompeii was conquered and, a few years later, made a Roman colony. These changes appear to have affected not only the structure’s appearance but probably also some of its original military functions.
One of the most interesting features is the postern surviving on the western side. Its threshold now lies approximately two metres above the ground level of AD 79, an apparently unusual position that attests to substantial changes in the external ground level already in antiquity. Studies have shown that the ground around the tower was lowered considerably from its original level.
Beside the main chamber, a narrower space can be identified that housed the staircase leading to the upper floor. Its vaulted covering and the traces preserved in the masonry allow the tower’s vertical arrangement to be reconstructed at least in part, although the upper levels no longer survive in their original form.
The façade also has rectangular openings that do not correspond exactly to the defensive arrangement reconstructed for the other Pompeian towers. This feature too has been interpreted as the result of alterations after the Roman conquest, when the fortifications gradually lost the military role they had played during the Samnite period.
From Tower II, the city walls continue east towards Nocera Gate and Tower III. This sector reveals particularly clearly the relationship between the fortifications and the natural shape of the terrain, which the ancient Pompeians used as an integral part of their defensive system.
With the foundation of the Roman colony in 80 BC, the walls gradually ceased to play a fundamental strategic role. Some sectors continued to be maintained, while others were altered, restored or absorbed into the gradual expansion of the city’s buildings. Tower II also seems to reflect this new phase in the city’s history through the modifications made to its original structure.
Tower II and the city walls therefore provide particularly interesting evidence of the development of Pompeii’s defences. The structure preserves elements of the military arrangement that predated the Roman conquest, as well as traces of later changes, revealing how a fortification built to protect the city was gradually adapted to a Pompeii now firmly incorporated into the Roman world.
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