Address
Opening times
The tower is visible from the outside; the inside cannot be visited.
Description
During the Middle Ages, there were up to three hundred towers in Rome, which, together with the church towers, gave the city a vertical, thorny appearance.
In Via dei Portoghesi, near Piazza Navona, you can admire the Frangipane Tower, known by everyone as the Monkey Tower.
The unusual name comes from a popular legend, immortalised by the American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne in his travel notes to Italy and in the better known novel 'The Marble Faun'.
The palace was inhabited by a nobleman, who had an only son and a monkey. One day, the animal took the child and climbed to the top of the tower. The desperate father entrusted his prayers to the Virgin Mary: meekly, the monkey descended and returned the child to his cot.
The assembled crowd cried out for a miracle and from that day on, as a testimony to the grace received, the father wanted a lamp to burn perpetually at the top of the tower.
