|
Copyright © 2005 Markus Altendorff, All Rights Reserved
You're standing on the balcony of the Saint Martin's church tower of Amberg, in the Upper Palatinate district of Bavaria. The church and its tower first were built around 1500, suffered damage from war at the beginning of the 18th century, was complete in its current shape around 1720, reinforced on the inside with iron clamps in 1857 and most recently renovated in 1999. With its 91.5 meters, the tower is the second tallest in the Upper Palatinate, only surpassed by the Regensburg cathedral.
On the same floor as the balcony you're standing on, inside the tower, is a small apartment with three rooms. This was the workplace for the official tower keeper of the city. The people living and working there had to watch for two feared enemies, one being the human kind, approaching from outside the city wall (in shape roughly the same as the green ring of trees surrounding the town's core) the other, possibly even worse enemy from the inside: fire. For the fire watch, the town was divided into four quarters (along the main road and along the river that runs through it). A red flag was attached to the balcony on the side of the tower that faced the location of any fire source.
|
Previous
