Three Towers

Where the road from the Pfaffenthal climbs up to the old town, three towers stand together over the way: a square one in the middle, a round one on either side. These are the Dräi Tierm, the Three Towers, and the square one is about the oldest thing in Luxembourg that still has a roof on it. It was part of the second ring of walls, built around 1050 — a century after Siegfried's castle — and the two round towers were added in the middle of the thirteenth century. For hundreds of years this was the Pfaffenthal Gate, the way into the upper town from the valley.

Nearly all the fortress came down after 1867, and the Three Towers were spared for a very ordinary reason: people were living in them. A Captain Weydert of the Volunteer Company had his home here into the twentieth century. Later the towers served as a prison, and it is said that the guillotine, when it was not needed elsewhere, was kept inside. The prison connection outlived the prison: the warders at Schrassig, the country's prison today, still wear the three towers as the emblem on their collars.

You can't go in. But stand beside them, by the Spanish turret where the Montée de Pfaffenthal meets the boulevards, and you get one of the best views in the city — the Pfaffenthal in the valley below, and the Kirchberg beyond, with the Red Bridge striding across from one to the other.