The Tower Behind Grusbeke

I was built to reinforce the segment of wall at its bend between Renten and Epping Towers when the city was getting richer and richer through trade with the Hanseatic League (which is to say – while selling salt from Russia).

I was named after the owner of a nearby house. To see me from outside the wall, from the Suurtüki courtyard, I appear to be quite round. However, from the inside on Laboratory street, one can clearly see that the city wall intersects a portion of me like a tendon and makes me flat there. Just like Plate Tower nearby, my first floor is a high storage room covered in cylinder vaults. The machicolations are higher, on the second and third floors.

Currently, I can be recognised by my wooden steps which allow access up to the tower, but those were added fairly recently. Although I did have something similar in the olden days when I joined segments of the wall together that had been built at different times. The stairs lead right up to the second floor.

Construction history. Constructed all at once in 1410 as a three-storey defensive tower.