The Broken Tower of Boița

The Broken Tower (Turnul Spart), also called Old Turnu Roșu, lies in the village of Boița, Boița commune, on the right bank of the Olt at its confluence with the Meghiș brook, about 5 km from the village, next to the DN7 national road along the Olt valley. The tower was 20 metres high, with three storeys of firing windows and walls 4 metres thick. Records in the State Archives in Sibiu show that in 1501 King Vladislaus of Hungary ordered the construction of a „strong tower not far from the one at Turnu Roșu” to control access to the Olt gorge. For two years the people of Sibiu drew up the plans and gathered the materials, at a total cost of 468 florins, and the tower was completed in the summer of 1503. The fortification also included a wall with a gate running from the mountainside down to the riverbed, with a vaulted passage at the level of the old road, which lay lower than today's DN7. Archaeological research in 2015 confirmed that the tower was destroyed in 1533 by a flood that washed away the ground under its road side, with no trace of attack or fire. About half of the original tower survives today and can be seen from the DN7 and from the bank of the Olt. Excavations in 1991 and 2015 uncovered, among other finds, two 16th-century arquebuses and a bronze vessel inscribed „1516”. The tower was part of the gorge's system of fortifications, together with Tălmaciu Fortress, Turnu Roșu Castle and Lotrioara Fortress. The tower is a class A historic monument, LMI code SB-II-m-A-12334. In 2025 the Ministry of the Environment put the Lotrioara hydropower project back to public consultation; its reservoir would flood the area around the tower, and the designers propose protecting the monument with a base and a concrete basin.