>Wealthy families built these as mini-fortresses within the city, where they could defend against riots, enemy families
They needed some mini-fortresses, but why build them in the form of a tower? They could have built a secure, easy to defend structure less tall.
Maybe they've built them for showing off, the taller the building, the higher the prestige? At least, that is the reason we have skyscrapers.
"Signs of wealth and prestige, these all-stone buildings were also fireproof, leading to a terrible but effective tactic: take your family, treasures & goods up into your tower then set fire to enemies’ homes and let the city burn around you while you sit safe above. This was VERY BAD for cities."
I'd want to stay as far away as possible from the fire I guess.
Also, it seems to be quite a busy city - presumably they weren't necessarily able to acquire more land to make an actual fortification and are stuck with a fixed perimeter, the only place to go is up.
Although an element of prestige was obviously there, they went high also for the usual reason: cost. Italian cities like Firenze and Bologna, at the time, were among the richest in the world, and real-estate costs were sky-high. Buying land to erect some wall or other fortification, in the middle of the city, would have been a huge waste of money.
Even roman popes, when they decided they wanted a fortified structure, just reused the roman-era mausoleum of Hadrian - building from scratch would have been prohibitively costly.
Gotta be taller than the tallest ladder would be my guess. Tower forts are common. You can find them in places like Ireland also.
in a dense city you also have to take into account the height of the neighboring towers too - you don't want to be showered with arrows and later musket balls from a higher tower near by - thus race to the top :)
yep. From reading Bret Devereaux's Acoup.blog, I've learned that especially with arrows, height is an advantage - if you're firing down on someone from a position above them, you can aim easier, and your arrow is accelerated by gravity. Conversely, if you're firing up at someone from a position below them, gravity is working against you, and it's harder to aim.
This is why they build seige towers back in the day - to give the attackers a position higher than the beseiged city's walls from which to fire down on the defenders.