Eber’s water towers – Italy

The leading trade journal in Sweden, VA-tidskriften Cirkulation has since 1998 an article series under the heading Ebers vattentorn (Eber’s water towers), where Eber Ohlsson with text and photo presents interesting water towers in the world (except Scania and Sweden). Below is a free translation to English of these texts.


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 1/2024

A free translation to English:

Pier Luigi Nervi was a famous engineer in Italy, as with his sense of the aesthetics also came to shape many prestigious buildings, such as Rome’s Olympic Stadium for the Olympics in 1960 and the UNESCO building in Paris in 1950. His distinguishing mark became concrete buildings with an advanced and often visible structure.  

‘Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino’, a company that is better known under the acronym FIAT, has since 1968 a water tower standing inside its large factory Mirafiore in south Turin, a water tower, designed by just Pier Luigi Nervi. The water tower reservoir has the typical exposed concrete structure, as Nervi is known for.

Published 2024-02-14


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 6/2021

A free translation to English:

A water tower is assumed to supply drinking water to the subscribers, but there are exceptions to this rule, although it is very unusual. In the Italian city of Trieste on the Adriatic Sea is in the harbor an Art Nouveau building from 1913, which was formerly a fish market. The building’s tower, which gives the impression of being a bell tower, however, is a water tower.

The reservoir contained salt water, which was delivered to the market’s fishmongers, so that they could keep their goods fresh. Now the fish market is gone and the building has an aquarium since 1933 and an exhibition hall.

Published 2021-09-22


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 5/2018

A free translation to English:

Angiolo Mazzoni, who was an engineer and architect of the National Post Office and the National Railways in Italy during the fascist period, designed two holiday camps, one for post and one for railway-employees’ children. The modernistic establishments, with a water tower in futuristic architecture, were completed in 1931. They are located in the seaside resort Calambrone at the Pisa-coast, north of Livorno.

The tower was a precursor to the water towers, which he later designed at Stazione Termini in Rome The holiday camps that was called Colonia Rosa Maltoni Mussolini after Benito Mussolini’s mother, is now privatized and modernized.

Published 2018-08-22


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 1/2015

A free translation to English:

Who gets the most attention? In a modern world, there is always signals that demands your attention. This can apply to commercial activities, such as the furniture store at the picture, with Swedish roots and with their colors manifests precisely this origin.

It can also apply to an activity such as water supply, as the water tower at the picture on the outskirts of Rimini, Italy. With its painted checkerboard pattern and its height, the tower catches the eye. It will perhaps be an equable battle in attention. Financially, the store will however probably get more benefit of your attention than what the Rimini water companies Amir get.

Published 2015-02-11


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 1/2013

A free translation to English:

When we today look at Austria and Hungary on the map, we see landlocked countries. But that was not the case a century ago. At that time the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary had both coasts and ports on the Adriatic. The Habsburg Empire large export and import port was the city of Trieste.

That is one of the reasons why you today in Trieste harbor find many beautiful, more than 100 years old port warehouses and one old water tower, all reminiscent of the empire’s heyday. The cosmopolitan city, which in more than 500 years belonged to Austria, came after World War I to be part of Italy and serve a reduced area.

Published 2013-02-13


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 5/2011

A free translation to English:

Po Valley is a fertile region and Italy’s main industrial centers. On the plain meanders the Po river, the country’s longest river and alongside the river, twenty km from Parma, is the city Casalmaggiore situated beneath an embankment to protect against river flooding.

In the city center was built during the fascist period a water tower, ”Torre Littoria”, a name manifesting the then political regime. The architecture is typical of the contemporary public buildings. The square tower, which was completed in 1936, has side length 9 m and a height of 40 m. Today, the tower has only a mobile phone mast function.

Published 2011-08-24


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 6/2009

A free translation to English:

There are water towers that fulfil its function, without to get any attention – so far they supply good water with an adequate pressure. Such a water tower is there in the Italian city Pisa, there however this water tower broke the anonymity by wearing the arms of the city.

In the same city is there an another tower that not supplies the citizens with water, and moreover leans because it is insufficiently piled in a ground consist of sand, clay, gravel and under that blue clay. In other words a tower that not has been as it was planned. But this tower got more attention. There is no gratitude in this world.

Published 2009-10-07


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 4/2008

A free translation to English:

Stazione Termini, Rome Central Station, is named after one of the Roman large baths, Diocletianus thermae, there baths was going on in alternating warm and cold water. On the opposite part of the station area is there two flank water towers that ought to have delivered cold water to the locomotives, water that thereafter was heated.

The water towers are drawn by chief engineer and chief architect Angiolo Mazzoni that was inspired by the Constructivist architecture style. The towers as well as the renewal of the station were a work on the eve of the great World Exhibition 1942 in Rome, an event that however comes to nothing.

Published 2009-06-04


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 4/2007

A free translation to English:

In The Eternal City Rome, the old and the new are mixed. At Porta Maggiore there are many old aqueducts, but even a 70 year old water tower. The tower has inscriptions above a temple gable. Uppermost the acronym SPQR, Senatus Populusque Romanus (The Senate and the Roman people) used under the Roman Empire as well as in modern time.

Under the SPQR there is an asymmetric time denunciation; 1934 in Latin letters, as well as a vacant space. The year of the vacant space, EF XIII, is able to get with help of the wall ties. EF stands for the Fascists Time, Era Fascista, that started 28/10 1922. Everything do not last for ever.

Published 2007-06-07


Eber’s water towers in Cirkulation 4/2005

A free translation to English:

An ideal tower founded 1593, with a water tower in Art Nouveau from 1914-15 situated northwest Trieste in Italy. That is the tower of Palmanova; once time founded as a Venice frontier stronghold and built as what they at that time thought was a Roman ideal plan.

In the renaissance nine-sided town the streets converge radial some blocks from the hexagonal squire. It is described in the most textbooks in town geography or town planning. In the end of one of the radial streets a concrete water tower is standing, planned by engineer Schiavi. The tower, with a reservoir on 250 m³, was out of duty in the 1990s.

Published 2005-06-08