Tower house

[1] Tower houses began to appear in the Middle Ages, especially in mountainous or limited access areas, to command and defend strategic points with reduced forces.

In Italian medieval communes, urban palazzi with a very tall tower were increasingly built by the local highly competitive patrician families as power centres during times of internal strife.

Furthest west in Spain, in Galicia, medieval tower houses are in the origin of many Modern Age pazos, noble residences as well as strongholds.

[5] In the Baltic states, the Teutonic Order and other crusaders erected fortified tower houses in the Middle Ages, locally known as "vassal castles", as a means of exercising control over the conquered areas.

For example, the North Caucasus was a country where fierce competition over limited natural resources led to chronic feuding between neighbours.

There are numerous examples of tower houses in Svaneti, Chechnya and Ingushetia, where a clan-like social structure survived well into the 20th century.

Similarly, hundreds of Tibetan tower houses dot the so-called Tribal Corridor in Western Sichuan, some 50 metres high with as many as 13 star-like points, and the oldest are thought to be 1,200 years old.

[6] There is a prominent structure at that site which is called the "tower house" and has the general appearance characteristics of its counterparts in Britain and Ireland.