Firefighters' Tower, Cluj-Napoca

The Firefighters' Tower stands at 17 Tipografiei Street, in the north-eastern part of the historic centre of Cluj, about 400 metres north of Unirii Square. Together with a stretch of wall, it is one of the few surviving parts of the second defensive wall of the medieval town. The tower began as a small gate in the wall, known as the "Little Gate of Soap Street". The List of Historic Monuments dates the tower to 1405 (its upper part to the 19th century), and historical sources show that it was raised in 1574, under Stephen Báthory. Towards the end of the 16th century the town council stationed permanent watchmen here to signal fires. The tower survived several of the town's great fires, but was damaged by the fire of 1876; it was rebuilt and raised again in the second half of the 19th century and served as a fire watch post until the 1930s, hence its present name. Later it briefly housed a small firefighters' museum. Between 2017 and 2022 Cluj-Napoca City Hall restored the tower, based on the winning entry of the international design competition "The Tower of Three Ages", organised with the Romanian Order of Architects; the lead architect is Vlad Sebastian Rusu, with Octav Olănescu and Anamaria Olănescu. The old glass pyramid was replaced by an enclosed glazed level and an open terrace with a 360-degree view of the city. Visitors go up by lift and come down by the stairs, passing through the historic levels of the tower, where original masonry, carved stones, old inscriptions and drawings can be seen. The tower reopened to the public on 20 March 2023 and serves as a viewpoint and a venue for cultural events. The tower is a category A historic monument, LMI code CJ-II-m-A-07242.03, part of the ensemble "Fragment of the wall of the second enclosure of the medieval town" (CJ-II-a-A-07242). It is managed by Cluj-Napoca City Hall. Did you know that, according to historians of Cluj, the tower came through one of the great 17th-century fires that destroyed much of the town untouched, even though seven tonnes of gunpowder were stored in it at the time?