Tower of Pirama

The Tower of Pirama stands above the small village of the same name, four kilometres north of Volissos on the island of Chios. It is a Genoese construction, dated to 1515, a fact confirmed by a building contract recorded in the research of Philip P Argenti. The tower was one of a pair, its close sibling being the slightly larger tower at Phyta, and both were raised by the same team of builders under a master named Isidoros Politis. The same crew, after 1515, also built towers in Ververato, Chalkios and the vanished village of Varnaritis, though none of these survive. Their fees were reckoned in Genoese hyperpyra and carati, paid per canna of the longest wall. The tower has a rectangular plan of 7.8 by 11.6 metres, giving a base of 92 square metres, with walls 1.5 metres thick at ground level and one metre above. Originally it rose over 13 metres, with three storeys and a battlemented parapet.