About this place
Standing near the Rhine on Holzstrasse, the Holzturm is one of only three medieval towers still surviving from Mainz's city fortifications, alongside the nearby Iron Tower and the Alexander Tower. Its present Gothic form dates to the first half of the fifteenth century, when it replaced an older thirteenth-century gate known as the Neuturm. Six storeys of crushed-stone masonry rise to a steep, tent-shaped roof, its verticality unmistakably Gothic and far more slender than its stockier sibling, the Iron Tower. The name comes from the timber that was floated down the Rhine from southern Germany and stacked at the wood market just outside these walls. Over the centuries the tower served as watchtower, gate, and gaol, holding revolutionaries of the short-lived Republic of Mainz and, most famously, the outlaw Schinderhannes. Badly damaged in the Second World War, it was faithfully rebuilt in 1961 for the city's two-thousandth anniversary.
Key facts
- 6 storeys — The slender Gothic tower rises through six storeys of crushed-stone masonry
- 3 towers — One of only three medieval towers left from the old Mainz city wall
- 1803 year — The bandit Schinderhannes was jailed here before his execution outside the city gates
📍 Holzstraße 27, 55116, Mainz