---
title: "Tower VI and the City Walls - Pompeii Online"
description: "The ancient city of Pompeii: Information on visiting hours, tickets, guides, online tickets, tourist itineraries, news and much more."
url: "https://www.pompeionline.net/en/buildings-and-places/suburban-area/tower-vi-city-walls"
date: "2026-09-15T08:47:05+00:00"
language: "en-GB"
---

#  Tower VI and the City Walls

**Tower VI** forms part of Pompeii’s defensive system and stands along the eastern sector of the city walls, between **Tower V and Sarno Gate**, just north-east of the Amphitheatre. Here the fortifications followed a relatively exposed stretch of the plateau, where the towers helped strengthen a defensive line that enjoyed less natural protection than the city’s western and southern slopes.

The tower belonged to the group of **twelve defensive towers** built during the final major strengthening of Pompeii’s walls, between the late 2nd and early 1st centuries BC. These reinforcements preceded the **siege of 89 BC**, when Pompeii, which had taken sides against Rome in the Social War, was attacked by the army of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Research on the fortifications has documented substantial work in this phase intended to adapt the walls to new techniques of warfare.

Like the other towers in the system, **Tower VI** originally had several levels. The general reconstruction of Pompeii’s fortifications indicates three-storey structures supported by barrel vaults, linked by internal staircases and provided with side entrances to the wall walk. A small opening to the outside of the walls may also have been present on the lowest level.

The surviving structure of Tower VI includes a large **interior chamber**, portions of its enclosing walls and several entrances. Unlike some neighbouring towers, its surviving ancient fabric shows no obvious traces of substantial rebuilding, making it particularly useful for understanding the original arrangement of the defensive system.

The history of Tower VI was, however, profoundly affected by changes in the nearby area of the **Amphitheatre**, built around 70 BC, a few years after the foundation of the Roman colony. Construction of this large building for spectacles involved altering the ancient **agger**, the earth embankment piled up behind the walls and also used to reach the upper levels of the fortifications.

Lowering the embankment radically changed the relationship between Tower VI and the surrounding ground levels. The tower’s **rear and northern entrances** were left much higher than the ground used in the final decades of Pompeii’s life, while the entrance on the southern side continued to provide direct access to the building.

This situation can still be clearly understood from the surviving structures. The rear doorway of the main chamber is approximately **one and a half metres higher** than the floor of the corridor to which it must have been connected. A staircase must therefore have provided access to it, although no trace survives; it has been suggested that this was built at least partly from perishable materials.

The **original floor of the lower chamber** has also been lost. It is impossible to determine with certainty when it disappeared, but these alterations as a whole show that the tower’s internal arrangement changed after it lost its strictly military role.

Tower VI and neighbouring Tower V are, in fact, two particularly clear examples of the changes brought about by the Roman conquest. Work associated with the Amphitheatre compromised certain features essential to the towers’ military operation, making access to the wall walk more difficult and altering the system of internal connections.

It is therefore likely that, during the Roman period, these structures had come to serve primarily a **monumental and symbolic role**, continuing to define the city’s skyline even when they were no longer needed as functioning defences. Some surfaces of Tower VI also preserve traces of **light-coloured plaster**, showing that the masonry was not necessarily left with its stone exposed.

From Tower VI, the city walls continue north towards **Sarno Gate**. The surviving masonry along this stretch makes it possible to follow the eastern edge of the ancient city and observe the relationship between the towers, curtain walls and ground outside. To the south, the walls reach Tower V and the Amphitheatre area.

With the foundation of the Roman colony in **80 BC**, the entire system of fortifications gradually lost its strategic importance. The peace secured by Pompeii’s incorporation into the Roman world allowed the old embankments and walls to be used for new urban needs, altering structures that only a few decades earlier had been essential to the city’s defence.

**Tower VI and the city walls** therefore illustrate particularly clearly the transition from the fortified Pompeii of the Samnite age to the Roman city. The tower preserves the layout of the ancient defensive system, while the entrances left high above ground level provide tangible evidence of the changes that accompanied the construction of the Amphitheatre and the gradual loss of the walls’ military function.

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