Heidenturm

Heidenturm rises within Nuremberg Castle on the sandstone ridge above Nuremberg, Bavaria, alongside the Imperial Chapel. The tower belongs to the castle’s medieval architecture. The wider fortress began taking shape in the eleventh century, above evidence of a Carolingian settlement from the ninth century. Its buildings expanded under Salian, Staufer and Hohenzollern rulers.

Imperial diets, court days and judicial proceedings took place here, strengthening Nuremberg’s political role during the Middle Ages. Romanesque wall decorations once covered parts of the tower. During a sixteenth-century renovation, workers mistook some images for pagan subjects and removed part of that decoration. Fragments of the artwork remain on the lower floors. World War Two damaged the castle, which later underwent restoration. Those surviving fragments preserve a small, tangible trace of the tower’s medieval interior.