Tour Jacob

This square tower over the road is the oldest gate in Luxembourg, and the stone bridge on the river below it is the oldest bridge. Both belong to the third ring of walls, the one built from about 1380 under Wenceslas, the King of Bohemia who was also Duke of Luxembourg, to bring the lower town and the Rham plateau inside the city's defences for the first time.

The gate went up around 1393, when an older one nearer the abbey was closed, and for the next two centuries anyone arriving from Trier — the main road east — came into Luxembourg through it. By day you crossed a wooden bridge, paid the toll at the little "Porthus" outside, and passed under the vault; by night it was shut. It had no drawbridge, so it had three doors instead: an outer gate, an iron portcullis with a second gate behind the arch, and an inner gate on the town side. It was partly burnt when the Burgundians took the city in 1443, and badly damaged again when the French stormed it in 1684, and rebuilt both times. By 1590 a second Trier gate had been built a little further in and this one was walled up.

The name it carries now comes from the fortress's last years. From 1815 to 1867 the tower was the garrison's prison, and it was called after a warder named Jacob — whether well known or notorious, nobody wrote down. Before that it was the Dinselpuert, from "Dinsel", the old name of the plateau behind it, which probably comes from the Latin insula: the Rham is an island in all but one direction, with the river wrapped around three sides of it. When the fortress was dismantled the passage was opened again, and the street down to Clausen was named after the tower.

Below you, the Stierchen carries the wall across the Alzette on stone arches. It dates from the middle of the fifteenth century, and it was built so that the river itself could be closed like a gate.