Along the Italian coasts, there are isolated cylindrical or square-plan buildings that have watched over the sea for centuries: these are the coastal towers, also called “torri di guardia” or “torri di avvistamento”. Born with the aim of countering the dangers that arrived from the sea, these individual sentinels were part of a protection system that has ancient origins, but which saw its greatest period between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Their institutional and defensive function ceased in the first half of the 19th century, some of these towers were mercilessly used for different functions, with interventions that partially altered their original appearance. I have preferred to direct my interest only to some of those coastal towers which miraculously survived the danger for which they were built. Beaten by the sea wind, by the waves and by the saltiness that has inexorably modified their structure, reducing them to a state of ruin, these archaic lookouts of the sea have shown an extraordinary survival force: they are still lit embers that oppose the inexorable action of nature , revealing in their fragility a stubborn resistance. However, it is not their nostalgic reading that prompted me to photograph them, nor the documentary desire, but my constant need to grasp in the present what remains of ancient functional buildings, then fallen into disuse, then abandoned. In a modern and varied landscape vision, whose seas - Adriatic, Ionian, Mediterranean, Tyrrhenian - extend to the horizon, these silent wrecks have taken on a new, original and highly fascinating aesthetic form, which inspires me to reflect on our existence, on our future and on our earthly passage. Along the Italian coasts, there are isolated cylindrical or square-plan buildings that have watched over the sea for centuries: these are the coastal towers, also called “torri di guardia” or “torri di avvistamento”. Born with the aim of countering the dangers that arrived from the sea, these individual sentinels were part of a protection system that has ancient origins, but which saw its greatest period between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Their institutional and defensive function ceased in the first half of the 19th century, some of these towers were mercilessly used for different functions, with interventions that partially altered their original appearance. I have preferred to direct my interest only to some of those coastal towers which miraculously survived the danger for which they were built. Beaten by the sea wind, by the waves and by the saltiness that has inexorably modified their structure, reducing them to a state of ruin, these archaic lookouts of the sea have shown an extraordinary survival force: they are still lit embers that oppose the inexorable action of nature , revealing in their fragility a stubborn resistance. However, it is not their nostalgic reading that prompted me to photograph them, nor the documentary desire, but my constant need to grasp in the present what remains of ancient functional buildings, then fallen into disuse, then abandoned. In a modern and varied landscape vision, whose seas - Adriatic, Ionian, Mediterranean, Tyrrhenian - extend to the horizon, these silent wrecks have taken on a new, original and highly fascinating aesthetic form, which inspires me to reflect on our existence, on our future and on our earthly passage.