At the centre of Piazza San Martino ai Monti, standing apart from its original medieval urban setting, rises the tower known as the Torre dei Capocci. From the early twentieth century onwards, historians have attributed its construction to Giovanni Capocci, who died in 1215, on the basis of a passage from the chronicle of the life of Pope Innocent III (1198–1216).
Between 1204 and 1208 Rome was the stage of clashes that set the pope and his family against the Capocci and the Roman people, with the territory between the Quirinal, Oppian and Esquiline hills becoming heavily militarised. The tower formed part of the palace where the Capocci family resided.
On 10 November 1500 the property — vineyard, houses and tower — passed to Vannozza Cattanei, and by the sixteenth century it had become an appurtenance of the monastery of Santa Lucia in Selci, as documented by the city maps of Du Pérac (1577), Tempesta (1593) and Falda (1676).
The last restoration works took place between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Alessandro Vessella (1860–1929), conductor of the Banda di Roma, kept his studio in the tower. Since 1936 the Tower has been entrusted to the Giampaoli brothers — Pietro, Celestino and Vittorio — who made it an artistic workshop.
