White Tower (Bad Homburg)
The White Tower of Bad Homburg from the 14th century is the free-standing keep of the former Hohenberg Castle and the landmark of the city of Bad Homburg vor der Höhe .
Building history and description
The today 48.11 meter high cylindrical tower was built after 1354, the founding of the Homburg burgrave family by Johann Brendel, probably between 1355 and 1370, as a free-standing keep, defense tower and Schauinsland of what was then Hohenberg or Brendelburg Castle, later Homburg Castle, made of quarry stone on a sandstone base erected and plastered in a contemporary light. As a keep with its high entrance, only accessible by a ladder, it was the residential and main defense tower of the castle complex, which was converted into a landgrave's castle in 1680. It consists of two sections: The lower part is 28.5 m high, 10 meters in diameter and has an upper part with eight windows, protruding over a circumferential arched frieze with four integrated machicolation , which ends with a circumferential battlement and battlement . The upper section, a so-called butter barrel tower , measures 5.95 meters in diameter at a height of 20 m (originally 13.5 m). It was finished with a crenellated wreath and a defense platform. Landgrave Friedrich I had an approx. 3.5 m high bell helmet (with weather vane 6.1 m) put on the originally 42 m high defense tower in 1630 , whereby the ten battlements became window frames. Under the weather vane, renewed in 1704 and with the intertwining name of Friedrich II , is a gold-plated tower ball ( button ) that contains a small Hesse-Homburg family archive. The Landgrave's coat of arms was attached to the north side in the same year, and a large, low-lying entrance with a double staircase was broken into the south-west side of the wall, which was set in sandstone in 1842. In 1790, the tower room was built under Friedrich V. At the foot of the White Tower , the last Landgrave Ferdinand left the sandstone statue of Landgrave Friedrich VI in a niche on the east side . , his eldest brother, set up as a knight in historicizing late medieval armor, a work by Johann Baptist Scholl from Darmstadt from 1849. The keep, which today functions as a lookout tower , offers a view of the city of Bad Homburg towards the Wetterau and Taunus after climbing 174 steps . To the south the view extends to the Odenwald . Today the tower appears in the white plaster that gave it its name, with red pinnacles, friezes, door and window frames.
Web links
- State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.): Castle and Castle Garden In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hesse
Coordinates: 50 ° 13 ′ 39.6 ″ N , 8 ° 36 ′ 35.3 ″ E