Built originally for defensive purposes as well as habitation, a tower house was a common type of building in Pisa, especially in the Middle Ages. It was used normally as the residence of aristocratic families. There is little information about the original owners of this tower, but it is speculated that it belonged to the Griffi family. A member of this family was the consul Cocco Griffi who, in the twelfth century, started work on the fortification walls of the city. The first reliable information on the owners of the tower can be obtained from the Pisa land registry of 1428: among the buildings surveyed that year there is a description of a residential structure with a shop at the back, belonging to Bartolomeo Sampante, that fits the Torre del Campano.