Obertorturm
You start at the Obertorturm, first recorded in 1273 as "zem obern tor" and the oldest surviving structure of Schaffhausen's town fortifications. It began as the residential tower of the noble Fridbolt family and guarded the western entrance to the town. Before you walk through, look at the corner stones: where their colour changes, you can read the tower's original height. In 1513 it was raised to the 47 metres you see today, and in the same year it gained a Romanesque double window on the south side of the first floor and two late Gothic oriels at the roof.
Why put a fortified gate exactly here? Everything shipped on the Rhine between Lake Constance and Basel had to be unloaded in Schaffhausen, because the rapids and the Rhine Falls could not be navigated. The goods were loaded onto carts at the Schifflände, hauled along the Vordergasse and out towards the falls, and every one of those carts had to pass this gate. In 1461 the former mayor Hans Friedbold sold the tower to the town.
From 1513 the tower served as a watch post. If fire broke out or armed troops approached, the watchman had to ring the alarm bell. That watch lasted for centuries and was only abolished in 1922. Much of the gate's defences disappeared earlier: the bulwark built on the west side in 1638/39, during the Thirty Years' War, was razed in 1845, and the pointed arch gateway itself was demolished in 1853.
The tower you see is a 20th century adaptation inside an old shell. In 1934 the interior was rebuilt with ten floors and an attic, and a transformer station was installed; the pedestrian passage you can walk through dates from 1939/40. You see the Obertorturm from outside only. From here it is 480 m, about 6 min, to the Schwabentor, which once closed off the medieval town at its northern end.
