CAMPANILE, a bell tower, used in connection with churches or town halls, especially in Italy. The campanile is sometimes attached to the building and sometimes free standing. The earliest campaniles are those of the churches of S. Apollinare in Classe and S. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna, variously dated from the 7th to the loth century. These are simple round towers without decoration and with small, round, arched openings in pairs near the top. The more usual type of square campanile appears frequently from the loth century onwards, and was ap parently developed simultaneously in Rome and Lombardy. It is generally decorated by means of projecting vertical strips, known as pilaster strips, and ranges of arcaded cornice which divide the tower into several stages. Each stage has openings on all four faces, either single, double or triple-arched; where double or triple arches are used, there is frequently but a single column be tween the adjacent arches, even when the wall to be carried is of great thickness, so that a bracket capital, between the column and the arches, becomes necessary. The top of the campanile has an arcaded cornice, little, if any, larger than the cornices below. The roof, in early examples, is usually a pyramid of low pitch, invisible from the ground. This remained the Roman type throughout the Middle Ages, although many variations occurred. Cornices of pseudo-classic type are frequently used instead of the arcaded cornice, and the top cornice given greater importance by projecting the eaves of the roof. Openings are often large, com pletely filling the topmost stage with the exception of the sup porting piers at the corners. In general, the tendency in Roman examples is towards horizontality rather than verticality of effect. In many instances the horizontal stages formed by the successive cornices are treated alike, with ranges of wall arcades, as in the campanile of S. Giorgio in Velabro (early 12th century). Greater richness was sometimes given by building in fragments of Roman ornament. Other important Roman examples are : S. Prassede, 1080, Santi Quattro Incoronati, 1123, and S. Maria in Trastevere, The campanile reached its most highly organized forms in the north. The Lombards were obviously a tower-building people and they found in the campanile a great opportunity. The early tower of S. Satiro in Milan, of the late 9th century, already shows an advanced composition of horizontal stages, arcaded cornices which connect the corner pilaster strips, and arched openings, single below and double above. In the later, and much larger, northern campanile of S. Ambrogio in Milan (early 12th century) semicircular projections like engaged columns break up the stages and give additional vertical lines. The top storey so developed that it gave the effect of a crown to the whole compo sition—an immense aesthetic advance—and was finally completed by a pyramidal (occasionally conical) spire, even when the tower below was square, in which case the tower was first capped by a balustrade.
The spired and crowned tower became a favourite in Venetia; by the elimination of horizontal cornices and large openings below the belfry stage, every effort was made to develop a sense of height. The Venetian campanile consists of a tall, square, slim shaft, frequently tapered or battered, which rises unbroken to the open belfry at the top. This belfry has one or two stages of arcade, and is often in stone, although the rest of the tower is brick. Above the belfry cornice rises the spire, sometimes square, as in the famous campanile at Venice (lower portion loth to 12th century, belfry storey 1510). The original building collapsed in 1902 but was rebuilt in 1908 in exact imitation of the old, or octagonal, with pinnacles and spirelets at the corners, as in the campanile of S. Zeno at Verona (12th century). The Venetian type, owing to its perfection, remained in constant use far into the Renaissance period.
Two campaniles of mediaeval Italy do not belong to any of these types. That at Pisa—the famous leaning tower—is a cir cular structure of great beauty and richness, with a heavy wall surrounded by stages of arcaded galleries. The other is the great campanile of Florence, designed by Giotto, Tadio Gadi and others (early 14th century). This remarkable composition uses the Lombard tradition of horizontal stages, but attains a sense of lightness by the daring octagonal corner buttresses and the tremendous enlargement of the belfry stage, which is approxi mately twice as high as any other. Of unique beauty, also, are the decorative sheathings of coloured marble and the exquisite sculpture that ornaments the lower storeys.
The great height of many of these Italian campaniles is notable. The total height of that at Venice is 32o ft.; at Florence, 275 ft.; of the Palazzo del Signore, Verona, 25o f t.; and at Cremona, 396 feet. With the advent of the Renaissance, and the subsequent popularity of the dome, the use of campaniles, except in Venetia, diminished rapidly.
Interesting modern campaniles are that of the cathedral at Westminster by G. F. Boaley, that of the municipal building group at Springfield, Mass., by Pell and Corbett, and that of the University of California, Berkeley, Calif., by J. G. Howard.