When we bought our old farmhouse in Umbria we also inherited a decaying tobacco drying tower. Tobacco still is grown extensively in our area but is now a very modern ,mechanised business with central drying facilities and most of the old towers have either been converted to other uses or left to fall into disrepair. Apparently we could have left it to fall down or actually demolished it without the need for any kind of permission but we decided to restore it to a degree because they are a part of the heritage of this area. The cultivation of tobacco brought some work and prosperity to the contidini who previously had suffered very harsh lives. Ours is home to all my gardening requisites and also used to store wood for our wood burning stoves - in other words a bit of a "glory hole". When embarking on the restoration work we found a large iron "ring" a bit like you might have found on an old cartwheel but much more substantial and with an "S" form across it - part of the simple machinery connected to the drying of the tobacco leaves that were hung from wooden poles and suspended within the tower we assumed.
At that time my grandchildren were quite small and I made them a "secret garden" within mine, somewhere they could go and get away from us. I placed the iron ring in on the ground and filled each side of the two areas formed by the "S" with different coloured gravel. Here they placed their "treasures". The gravel all looks the same colour now but some of the "treasures" remain.