Palazzo dell'Orologio - Torre della Muda o della Fame

This guide to the Palazzo dell'Orologio's Torre della Muda o della Fame in Pisa starts with its stranger first use: caging the commune's molting eagles while they grew new feathers, the ordinary civic job that gave the tower its name. Then, in the summer of twelve eighty-eight, Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, blamed for losing a war fleet to Genoa, was dragged up here by his rivals with two sons and two grandsons, and the door below was nailed shut, leaving only a narrow slit for light. Look up at that slit as you stand below the tower, the only window onto a room that once held eagles waiting for a new season of feathers.