The Bootmakers' Tower ( ro, Turnul Cizmarilor, german: Schusterturm, hu , Csizmadia tornya) is located in the north-east of the Citadel in
Sighişoara, belonging to
Mureș County in
Romania. The building has
baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
architectural influences. Despite its low height, the tower is interesting due to its
pentagon
In geometry, a pentagon (from the Greek πέντε ''pente'' meaning ''five'' and γωνία ''gonia'' meaning ''angle'') is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°.
A pentagon may be simpl ...
plan, an outer diameter of 10 meters long and a roof hosting two small and elegant observation towers, one facing South-east and one North-west. The current tower was built in 1681 on the site of a previous destroyed tower.
Restorations
The earliest documents mentioning the old tower are dated 1522. A large amount of
gunpowder was contained inside the tower and this is the main reason why the fire of 1676 destroyed it completely. In 1681 a brand new tower, under the leadership of
Major Michael Helwig, was built according to the baroque style.
The tower used to have a
bastion
A bastion or bulwark is a structure projecting outward from the curtain wall of a fortification, most commonly angular in shape and positioned at the corners of the fort. The fully developed bastion consists of two faces and two flanks, with fi ...
of
artillery which was demolished in 1846. The General Registry of the city, which keeps a weapon inventory shows the presence in the past of fourteen large and six small
arquebuses, three
musket
A musket is a muzzle-loaded long gun that appeared as a smoothbore weapon in the early 16th century, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus, capable of penetrating plate armour. By the mid-16th century, this type of musket gradually d ...
s, two quintals of
lead, two quintals of gunpowder, many cannonballs, eight
spears and a
two handed sword
The English language terminology used in the classification of swords is imprecise and has varied widely over time. There is no historical dictionary for the universal names, classification or terminology of swords; a sword was simply a double e ...
.
The Citadel tower facade has changed as well, especially following its transformation into a depository of archival documents after the
Second World War. The windows were enlarged, assuming very different dimensions from the ones in the
Middle Ages; this modification also necessitated modifications to the entrance.
In recent years, during 2001, an exterior wooden staircase was built on the facade of the tower. Even if the latest restoration does not respect the architecture of the past, it does not distort significantly the appearance of the monument.
Currently the tower hosts the local radio station.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bootmakers' Tower
Towers completed in 1681
Buildings and structures in Mureș County
Baroque architecture in Romania
Sighișoara