Carpenters' Tower

The Carpenters' Tower (German: Zimmermannsturm, Latin: turris carpentariorum) stands on Cetății Street, at the northern end of the row of three towers preserved here, together with the Potters' Tower and the Arquebusiers' Tower. It was built in the fourteenth century by the Saxon carpenters' guild and belongs to Sibiu's third fortified enclosure, dated by the List of Historic Monuments to 1357-1366. The towers of this enclosure were adapted to arquebuses, but their prismatic shape gave poor protection against the improving artillery. The tower was repaired and altered several times, along with the fortification works of the second half of the fifteenth century and the first decades of the sixteenth; its present form probably dates from the early sixteenth century. It is built of stone and brick, with a round base separated by a pronounced cornice from an octagonal prismatic body. The first level has keyhole-shaped loopholes for arquebuses, and the upper part projects outwards on corbels with machicolations between the arches. It is 21 metres tall. The tower was restored in 1967-1972 and again in the 2000s. In 2019-2020 Sibiu City Hall rehabilitated the three towers on Cetății Street and the walls on Corneliu Coposu Boulevard with more than six million lei from the local budget. The tower is part of the ensemble of the medieval city fortifications, a historic monument with the code SB-II-m-A-12010.03. Since 1 August 2020 the Carpenters' Tower and the Potters' Tower can be visited inside, for the first time in about 40 years: visitors enter through the Carpenters' Tower and leave through the Potters' Tower. The tower is on Cetății Street, a few minutes' walk from the Large Square.