Campanile (Ital. from low. Lat. campana, 'a bell'), a name adopted from the Italian to signify a bell-tower of the larger kind, and usually applied only to such as are detached from the church. Scarcely any of the existing bell-towers of England answer to the Italian conception of the campanile; and the beautiful 'campanile' at Salisbury, demolished by Wyatt in 1790, was really a multangular belfry, surmounted by a leaden spire. In Italy campaniles are found everywhere—at Rome, Bologna, Padua, Ravenna, Cremona, Venice. Perhaps the most remarkable are the so-called 'leaning tower' of Pisa and the campanile of Florence. The former, which is circular in form, is decorated with columns and arcades to the summit of its eight stories (see ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE). But though less curious, the famous campanile of Giotto at Florence is perhaps even more worthy of the traveller's attention. It was erected in 1334-37, with the express object of surpassing, both in height and in richness of workmanship, any of the remains of antiquity. In form it is a parallel-piped, and is of the same dimensions from bottom to top. Though it is very lofty—275 feet—it consists of only four stories, of which the tallest are the uppermost and undermost. The style is Italian Gothic, and the walls are entirely veneered with marble. The original design of Giotto was that a spire of 90 feet in height should have surmounted the present structure, and on the summit may be seen the four great piers from which it was intended that it should have risen. The splendid campanile of Florence, in its present condition, must thus be regarded only as a fragment. There is a fine campanile at Seville, 275 feet in height, the lower part of which (185 feet) was built as a minaret by Abu Yusuf Yakub in 1196, whilst the upper was added in 1568. It is called La Giralda ('the weathercock'), from a bronze figure of Faith, which, though it weighs a ton and a quarter, turns with the wind. The campanile attached to the palace of the Scaligeri at Verona is very graceful, and characteristic of the Italian principles of tower-building. The origin of the campanile as an adjunct to Christian structures is unknown. It cannot originally have been used for bells, as in early times only hand-bells of very small size were in use. Most probably, like the round towers of Ireland, the campaniles were constructed as places of security and observation. The earliest examples, such as those at Ravenna, are lofty and round. In later times the campanile was found useful for the great bells of the churches and cities, when they became objects of importance, and received elaborate decoration. They continued to be erected in all the styles of architecture practised in Italy up to recent times. Numerous Renaissance examples are thus found in Venice and elsewhere, that of St Mark's being a well-known and prominent feature in the city.
Campanology. See BELL.