Vogeltor

The Vogeltor is a gate tower in Augsburg, Germany, built in 1445 into the city's medieval wall. Mayor Konrad Vögelin commissioned it to replace a late fourteenth-century gate and drawbridge. It controlled the way into the Jakobervorstadt, now part of the inner city, and stands close to the old town. What you see today is a largely unadorned square brick tower of four storeys. A pointed Gothic arch leads into a star-ribbed vault, its large hanging keystone carved with a rosette. A high hipped roof crowns it, though the original one sat much flatter.

Legend says the council called the finished tower crooked and refused to pay the builder. He climbed to the top and proved it straight in a way two stone figures still commemorate. By the late nineteenth century the gate's defensive purpose had gone, so the city filled in the moat and removed the drawbridge. Bombs on the night of 25 to 26 February 1944 left only the archway standing. Augsburg rebuilt it by 1954, and in 1966 an open walkway with a shed roof replaced a side building. That walkway now traces the line of the old moat and wall.

The tower is hollow and stays closed to visitors. The outside makes up for it: a large crucifixion mural covers the south side above the arch. The north face carries a memorial plaque with a bird in flames. The gate also has a water story: a sixteenth-century waterworks beside it supplied the Lech district with drinking water. Its eighteenth-century water tower stands outwardly unchanged, part of Augsburg's water management system, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Nearby, you can still trace the outline of the pump house demolished in the 1930s.