Endinger tower

View from the steamship Stadt Rapperswil to the Endigerturm and the Einsiedlerhaus , in the background the Gugeliturm of the castle

Southwest city fortifications with the Capuchin monastery, in the background the Lindenhof

View from the castle hill to the Einsiedlerhaus, city wall and Endinger tower, in the foreground the small rose garden

The Endinger Tower is one of the four remaining towers of the medieval city fortifications of Rapperswil , a district of the Swiss municipality of Rapperswil-Jona in the canton of St. Gallen .

location

The Endinger Tower was a bulwark of the medieval city wall of Rapperswil, at the southwest end of the old town . Until the construction of the Capuchin monastery , it and the hermit's house formed the strongest bulwark at the inner harbor , today's fish market square , flanked by a small tower on the Endingerhorn protected by palisades .

Building history

The building history of the shell tower in the south of the castle hill is largely unclear. The three-storey building with its striking arrow slits could have been built as early as the second half of the 13th century with the completion of the building by Count Rudolf III. Fortification of the former fishing village of Endingen completed by Rapperswil . In the first phase, the southern city wall should have extended to the main square or the town hall . The fortress section with the attached semicircular Endinger Tower formed the western end of the fortifications on the lake side until 1597, which ended with the construction of the Capuchin monastery and the bastion at Endingerhorn. A breakthrough - today's Endingertor - to the Endingerhorn was likely to have taken place as early as 1597 . It is unclear whether the half-tower was originally built open or closed on the side facing the city.

Since the demolition of the city fortifications, the well-preserved bulwark with its semicircular pointed roof has not been used and forms part of the wall around the small rose garden by the hermit's house. Until the Bühler-Allee was built between the Einsiedlerhaus and the Haldenturm at Giessi -Wiese, the building was on the lakeshore. Today this section with the remnants of the medieval, about six meters wide and ten meters high city wall together with the Endingerhorn is the historically most important remnant of the former city fortifications in the west of the city.

Fountain

A first fountain at Endingerplatz was built in 1814, the current system was built in 1864. The massive rectangular tub made of a limestone monolith with the squat fountain pillar is leaned against the garden wall of the hermit's house. The Biedermeier fountain built in Marktgasse in 1872 was relocated to the Endingertor with the construction of Bühler-Allee and replaced in 1949 by a semicircular bowl fountain at the gate opening.

Web links

Commons : Endingerturm  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Website of the Rapperswil-Jona water supply: History of the old Rapperswil fountains ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed April 20, 2013.  

Coordinates: 47 ° 13 '35.2 "  N , 8 ° 48' 46.5"  E ; CH1903:  seven hundred and four thousand and seventy-six  /  two hundred and thirty-one thousand five hundred and twenty-four