Tower V forms part of Pompeii’s defensive system and stands in the south-eastern sector of the city walls, immediately east of the Amphitheatre. Its position is particularly significant because it reveals the relationship between the ancient Samnite fortifications and the extensive urban changes that followed the foundation of the Roman colony.
The tower was one of the twelve towers built in opus incertum during the final major strengthening of the walls in the early 1st century BC. This work took place shortly before the siege of Pompeii in 89 BC, when the Roman army led by Lucius Cornelius Sulla attacked the city during the Social War. The towers reinforced the most vulnerable sectors of the fortifications in particular and allowed the defenders to monitor both the ground outside and the wall walk.
Like the other structures of this phase, Tower V originally comprised three levels, supported by barrel vaults and linked by internal staircases at the rear. Side doorways gave access to the wall walk, while openings and arrow slits allowed the ground immediately outside the city to be observed and defended.
Tower V still preserves part of its complex internal arrangement. A large vaulted chamber, corridors, remains of the staircase and some defensive openings can be identified. The original floor surface of the lowest level no longer survives, and it is impossible to establish with certainty when it was removed.
The masonry reveals several phases of construction and restoration. At the corners and along the southern side, repairs incorporate toothed arrangements of brickwork, technically similar to those observed in Tower II. This feature has led to the suggestion that the structure was substantially rebuilt during the early phase of the Roman colony, after Sulla’s conquest.
The history of Tower V is closely linked to the construction of the Amphitheatre, built around 70 BC, shortly after the colony was founded. This large building for spectacles made use of the embankment inside the fortifications and profoundly altered the layout of this sector of the city. Lowering the ancient agger, the earth embankment against the walls, also changed the relationship between the tower and the surrounding ground levels.
As a result of these changes, some doorways in Tower V now appear to hang above the ground. Studies of the fortifications interpret this as the consequence of lowering the embankment when the Amphitheatre area was laid out, rather than as a construction error. The tower thus provides particularly clear evidence of how ancient military structures were adapted to the new needs of the Roman city.
A substantial part of the upper structures visible today is the result of modern restoration, so ancient masonry must be carefully distinguished from reconstruction. Nevertheless, enough original elements survive to reconstruct the tower’s general arrangement and identify the different phases of its transformation.
A small section of masonry in opus vittatum mixtum, a technique belonging to a late phase, also survives near the staircase. It has been suggested that this work may be connected with repairs carried out after the earthquake of AD 62. The presence of similar techniques in the upper arch of the nearby Amphitheatre makes it plausible that both buildings underwent work in the same period, although the connection cannot be regarded as conclusively proven.
The proximity of Tower V to the Amphitheatre illustrates particularly effectively the changes that followed the Roman conquest. A structure built only a few decades earlier for a strictly military purpose was gradually incorporated into a new urban layout, in which defensive needs gave way to public buildings, spectacles and the monumental life of the colony.
From Tower V, the city walls continue north along the eastern edge of the city towards Tower VI and, beyond it, Sarno Gate. In this sector, the towers were particularly important because the terrain offered less natural protection than the steep southern and western slopes of Pompeii’s plateau.
Tower V and the city walls therefore provide particularly significant evidence of Pompeii’s development between the Samnite and Roman phases. The defensive structures that predate Sulla’s siege, the alterations of the early colony, the construction of the Amphitheatre and the probable repairs following the earthquake reveal almost two centuries of urban change within a single building.
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