Tower sights in Europe
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Torre de Belém
Jutting out onto the Rio Tejo, the World Heritage–listed fortress of Torre de Belém epitomises the Age of Discovery. Francisco de Arruda designed the pearly-grey chesspiece in 1515 to defend Lisbon’s harbour and nowhere else is the lure of the Atlantic more powerful. The Manueline show-off flaunts filigree stonework, meringue-like cupolas and – just below the western tower – a stone rhinoceros. The ungulate depicts the one Manuel I sent Pope Leo X in 1515, which inspired Dürer’s famous woodcut. Breathe in to explore the poky former dungeons and climb a narrow spiral staircase to the tower, affording breathtaking views over Belém and the river.
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Town Hall
Raekoja plats (Town Hall Square) is dominated by the only surviving Gothic town hall in northern Europe (constructed in the early 14th century, reconstruction 1402-04). Old Thomas, Tallinn's symbol and guardsman, has been keeping watch from his perch on the weathervane atop Town Hall since 1530. You can also climb the building's tower (11:00-18:00 Jun-Sep; adult/student around KR25/EEK15).
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Tour de l'Ale
The cylindrical Tour de l'Ale, tucked away at the end of Rue de la Tour, is the only surviving vestige of medieval Lausanne's defensive walls. It was built in 1340 at the extreme western point of the medieval suburb of Ale. That we can admire the tower at all is due to those townspeople who opposed demolition plans in 1903.
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Willemswerf
Walk alongside the water on Boompjes until you see the striking 1998 Willemswerf, the headquarters of the huge Nedlloyd shipping company. Note the dramatic lines casting shadows on its sleek, white surface.
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Horní Náměstí
The splendid, polymorphous town hall (radnice) in the middle of Horní Náměstí was built in 1378, though its present architectural style and needlelike tower date from 1607. Note the oriel window of the 15th-century chapel on the south side and don't miss the astronomical clock on the north side, remodelled in communist style so that each hour is announced by ideologically pure workers instead of pious saints. The best display is at midday.
The square is surrounded by a jaw-dropping roll call of historic façades and contains two of the city's six baroque fountains. The Hercules fountain (Herkulova kašna) dates from 1688 and features the muscular Greek hero standing ast…
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30 St Mary Axe
Known to one and all as ‘the Gherkin’ (for obvious reasons when you see its incredible shape), 30 St Mary Axe – as it is officially and far more prosaically named – remains London’s most distinctive skyscraper, dominating the city despite actually being slightly smaller than the neighbouring NatWest Tower. The phallic Gherkin’s futuristic, sci-fi exterior has become an emblem of modern London as recognisable as Big Ben or the London Eye. Built in 2002–03 to a multi-award-winning design by Norman Foster, this is London’s first ecofriendly skyscraper: Foster laid out the offices so they spiral around internal ‘sky gardens’. The windows can be opened and the gardens are used…
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Kiz Kulesi
It's appropriate that the Kız Kulesi, one of this maritime city's most distinctive landmarks, is on the water. Arriving at Üsküdar by ferry, you'll notice the squat tower on a tiny island to the right (south), just off the Asian mainland. In ancient times a predecessor of the current 18th-century structure functioned as a tollbooth and defence point; the Bosphorus could be closed off by means of a chain stretching from here to Seraglio Point.
Some think its ancient pedigree goes back even further, calling it Leander's Tower after the tragic youth who drowned after attempting to swim across a strait to Europe to visit his lover, Hero. The object of his desire, who held…
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Galata Tower
The cylindrical Galata Tower stands sentry over the approach to ‘new’ İstanbul. For centuries the tallest structure in Beyoğlu, it dominates the skyline north of the Golden Horn. Galata was home to traders from Genoa and Venice during both Byzantine and Ottoman times, and functioned almost like a separate colony, with distinct architecture, a preponderance of taverns and a decidedly European flavour. Originally constructed in 1348, this tower was the highest point in the Genoese fortifications of the suburb, and has been rebuilt many times. It has survived a number of earthquakes, as well as the demolition of the rest of the Genoese walls in the mid-19th century. The pave…
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Lloyd’s of London
While the world’s leading insurance brokers are inside underwriting everything from trains, planes and ships to cosmonauts’ lives and film stars’ legs, people outside still stop to gawp at the stainless-steel external ducting and staircases of the Lloyd’s of London building. French free climber, or ‘spiderman’, Alain Robert even felt moved to scale the exterior with his bare hands in 2003. Lloyd’s is the work of Richard Rogers, one of the architects of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and although it was a watershed for London when it was built in 1986, it’s since been overtaken by plenty of other stunning architecture throughout the capital and looks rather tiny next to the…
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TV Tower
Prague’s tallest landmark – and, depending on your tastes, either its ugliest or its most futuristic feature – is the 216m-tall TV Tower, erected between 1985 and 1992. It dominates the skyline from most parts of the city, and is floodlit at night in the national colours of red, white and blue. The viewing platforms, reached by high-speed lifts, have comprehensive information boards in English and French explaining what you can see; there’s also a restaurant at 66m up. But the most bizarre thing about it is the 10 giant crawling babies with coin-slots for faces that appear to be exploring the outside of the tower – an installation called Miminka (Mummy) by artis…
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Zytglogge
Called Zeitglockenturm in High German, it was once part of the city's western gate (1191-1256). It's reminiscent of the Astronomical Clock in Prague's old town square in that crowds congregate to watch it chime - and then wonder why. The clock's revolving figures begin twirling at four minutes before the hour, after which the actual chimes begin. Tours enter the tower to see the clock mechanism between May and October (contact the tourist office).
It's said the clock tower helped Albert Einstein hone his theory of relativity, developed while working as a patent clerk in Bern. The great scientist surmised, while travelling on a tram away from the tower, that if the tram we…
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Funkturm
The Funkturm (radio tower), next to the trade-fair grounds, is by far the most visible structure in western Charlottenburg. Its filigree outline, which bears an uncanny resemblance to Paris’ Eiffel Tower, soars 138m into the Berlin sky (150m with antenna) and has been transmitting signals since 1926. In 1935 the first regular TV program in the world was broadcast from this tower, which looks especially pretty when lit up at night. From the viewing platform at 125m or the restaurant at 55m you can enjoy sweeping views of the Grunewald and the western city, as well as the AVUS, Germany’s first car-racing track, which opened in 1921; AVUS stands for Automobil-, Verkehrs- u…
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Old Town Bridge Tower
Perched at the eastern end of Charles Bridge, this elegant late-14th-century tower was built not only as a fortification but also as a triumphal arch marking the entrance to the Old Town. Like the bridge itself, it was designed by Peter Parler and incorporates many symbolic elements. Here, at the end of the Thirty Years’ War, an invading Swedish army was finally repulsed by a band of students and Jewish ghetto residents. On the 1st floor there’s a small exhibition and a video explaining the astronomical and astrological symbolism of Charles Bridge and the bridge tower, while the 2nd floor has a display of photographs recording the restoration of the tower’s east face, com…
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Lotrščak Tower
The Lotrščak Tower was built in the middle of the 13th century in order to protect the southern city gate. For the last hundred years a cannon has been fired every day at noon commemorating an event from Zagreb's history.
According to legend, a cannon was fired at noon one day at the Turks camped across the Sava River. On its way across the river, the cannonball happened to hit a rooster. The rooster was blown to bits and, the story goes, that's why the Turks became so demoralised they failed to attack the city. A less fanciful explanation is that the cannon shot allows churches to synchronise their clocks. The tower may be climbed for a sweeping 360-degree view of the …
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Firewatch Tower
The best place to begin a tour of Sopron is to climb the 200 steps of the narrow circular staircase to the top of the 60m-high Firewatch Tower at the northern end of Fő tér. The tower affords excellent views over the city, the Lővér Hills to the southwest and the Austrian Alps to the west, as well as Fő tér below and the four narrow streets that make up the Inner Town.
The tower, from which trumpeters would warn of fire, mark the hour (now done by chimes and tinny music) and greet visitors to the city in the Middle Ages, is a true architectural hybrid. The 2m-thick square base, built on a Roman gate, dates from the 12th century, and the cylindrical middle and arcade…
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Menshikov Tower
In the late 17th century Peter the Great gifted much of the land in Basmanny to his pal Alexander Menshikov, who invested his time and money to clean up the area. Hidden behind the post office, this famous tower was built between 1704 and 1706 on the order of Menshikov from his newly founded estate. The tower – one of Moscow’s first baroque buildings – was originally 3m taller than the Ivan the Great Bell Tower. A thunderstorm in 1723 saw it hit by lightning and seriously damaged by fire. Trouble plagued the owner as well. Menshikov fell from grace after the death of Peter the Great, and he was exiled to Siberia. The tower was neglected. When finally repaired in the 1780s…
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Palazzo Comunale
At the lowest point of the square (or the tap of the aforementioned metaphorical sink), stands the spare, elegant Palazzo Comunale, conceived by the Council of Nine as a nerve centre for the republican government, uniting the offices and courts in one building, thus greatly reducing the symbolic and actual power of the feudal nobles.
Dating from 1297, the palazzo is one of the most graceful Gothic buildings in Italy. The ground level was constructed in stone, the upper, crenulated levels in brick, with an ingeniously designed concave façade to mirror the opposing convex curve formed by the piazza. Also known as the Palazzo Pubblico, or town hall, the palazzo was purpose-…
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Leaning Tower
Yes, the really does lean.
In 1160 Pisa boasted 10,000-odd towers – but had no bell tower for its cathedral. Loyal Pisan Berta di Bernardo righted this in 1172 when she died, leaving a legacy for construction of a campanile (bell tower). Work began in 1173 but ground to a halt a decade later, when the structure’s first three tiers were observed to be tilting. In 1272 work started again, with artisans and masons attempting to bolster the foundations but failing miserably. Despite this, they keep going, compensating for the lean by gradually building straight up from the lower storeys and creating a subtle curve.
Over the centuries, the tower has tilted an extra 1mm eac…
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Rathaus
A short walk north of Residenzplatz, via Schrottgasse, is Passau's Rathaus , a grand Gothic building topped by its 19th-century landmark painted tower. A carillon chimes several times daily (hours are listed on the wall, alongside historical flood-level markers). The entrance on Schrottgasse takes you to the Grosser Rathaussaal (Great Assembly Room) where large-scale paintings by 19th-century local artist Ferdinand Wagner show scenes from Passau's history with melodramatic flourish.
If it's not being used for a wedding or a meeting, also sneak into the adjacent 'small assembly room' for a peek at the ceiling fresco which again features allegories of the three rivers.
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Cathedral of SS Peter & Paul
From the top of Zelný trh, Petrská climbs Petrov hill, site of the gargantuan Cathedral of SS Peter & Paul. Ascend its tower for great views of Brno, or descend into its forlorn crypt.
The 14th-century cathedral was originally built on the site of a pagan temple to Venus and has been reconstructed many times since. The highly decorated 11m-high main altar with figures of SS Peter and Paul was carved by Viennese sculptor Josef Leimer in 1891. The Renaissance Bishop's palace (Biskupská palác; closed to the public) adjoins the cathedral. To the left is the pleasant Denisovy Sady park, which sweeps in a verdant arc around Petrov hill.
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Jens Olsens Clock
You can poke around the main hall of the Rådhus (city hall) on your own but it’s more interesting to make the climb up the 105m clock tower for Jens Olsens Clock, which tops city hall, but expect a decent workout as there are some 300 steps along the way. The clock, designed by Danish astromechanic Jens Olsen (1872–1945) and built at a cost of one million kroner, is of special note to chronometer buffs, displaying not only the local time, but also solar time, sidereal time, sunrises and sunsets, firmament and celestial pole migration, planet revolutions, the Gregorian calendar and even changing holidays, such as Easter.
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French Tower
Inside the Castle of St Peter is the French Tower where lie the remains of a great and powerful woman. Though popularly said to belong to Queen Ada (a Carian princess who died sometime between 360 BC and 325 BC aged 29, and whose tomb was discovered by Turkish archaeologists in 1989), there is no concrete evidence for this. Buried with a gold crown, necklace, bracelets, rings and an exquisite wreath of gold myrtle leaves, her identity doesn't lessen the incredible value of the find.
Using modern reconstruction techniques, experts at Manchester University have modelled what she might have looked like; a video in Turkish explains their work.
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Clock Tower
Entering the citadel, you pass under the massive Clock Tower, which dates from 1280 and once housed the town council. Formerly the main entrance to the fortified city, the tower is 64m tall, with sturdy base walls measuring an impenetrable 2.35m. Inside, the 1648 clock is a pageant of slowly revolving 80cm-high figurines, carved from linden wood, each representing a character from the Greek-Roman pantheon: Peace bears an olive branch, Justice has a set of scales and Law wields a sword.
The executioner is also present and the drum-player strikes the hour. Above stand seven figures, each representing a day of the week.
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Tower of the Winds
The well-preserved Tower of the Winds was built in the 1st century BC by a Syrian astronomer named Andronicus. The octagonal monument of Pentelic marble is an ingenious construction that functioned as a sundial, weather vane, water clock and compass. Each side represents a point of the compass, and has a relief of a figure floating through the air, which depicts the wind associated with that particular point. Beneath each of the reliefs are the faint markings of sundials.
The weather vane, which disappeared long ago, was a bronze Triton that revolved on top of the tower. The Turks allowed dervishes to use the tower.
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Petřín Lookout Tower
The summit of Petřín is topped off with a 62m-tall Eiffel Tower lookalike built in 1891 for the Prague Exposition. You can climb its 299 steps for some of the best views in Prague – on clear days you can see the forests of Central Bohemia to the southwest. (There’s also a lift.) On the way to the tower you cross the Hunger Wall (Hladová zeď), running from Újezd to Strahov. These fortifications were built in 1362 under Charles IV, and are so named because they were built by the poor of the city in return for food –an early job-creation scheme.
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