Tour de Constance
The Tour de Constance (German: Tower of Resistance ) is a defensive tower in the southern French town of Aigues-Mortes on the edge of the Camargue . The tower was built from 1242 to 1254 under Louis IX. at the former location of the Tour Matafère , which was in turn built under Charlemagne around the year 790.
The tower has a diameter of 22 meters and a height to the top of the lantern of 33 meters. The thickness of the foundation walls is six meters.
The round, two-story tower stands outside the city wall, to which it is connected by a bridge.
The main rooms of the floors, in the basement this is the room for the guards and on the upper floor the knight's hall , each have a ribbed vault . A round opening in the middle of the guards' room gave access to the basement rooms, where there were dungeons and ammunition stores. The roof terrace, which at times served as an exit area for prisoners, is reached via the knight's hall.
Over the centuries the tower has served as a prison again and again. In the 14th century the members of the Knights Templar were imprisoned here, from the 17th century the Huguenots and in 1815 the officers of Napoleon .
The most famous prisoner was the Huguenot Marie Durand , who had been imprisoned here for 38 years from the age of 18 and was released in 1768. According to tradition, Marie Durand is said to have scratched the still legible word Resister (French, German, to fight back, to resist) on the edge of a well in the tower.
Since 1903 the tower has been listed as an architectural monument in the list of Monuments historiques (French, German historical monuments).
Literary adaptations
- Gertrud von le Fort The tower of constancy (1957). This story was written after her trip to Aigues-Mortes.
literature
- Thorsten Droste: Provence. A companion to the art places and natural beauties in the sunny country of France. Dumont art guide . 5th edition. Dumont, Cologne 2006, ISBN 978-3-7701-3927-9 .
- Martin Haug : La Tour de Constance - The tower of steadfastness . In: Heinz Kruppke (ed.): Works of Faith . Evangelische Verlagsanstalt , Berlin 1963, pp. 122–125.
Footnotes
- ↑ Tour in the meaning of tower is feminine in contrast to the tour in French
Web links
Coordinates: 43 ° 34 ′ 7.3 " N , 4 ° 11 ′ 23.1" E