Rhens church gate
Am Viehtor 2, 56321 Rhens
This gateway, built between 1396-1418, which now consists only of the scanty remains of a wall and the stump of a staircase, was twice destroyed in its 600-year history. In the seventeenth century, as Meissner's and Dilich's view of the city showed, it was still preserved as it had been planned and carried out around the year 1400.
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Over the rather generously dimensioned gatehouse rose a multi-storey tower with gothic roof, to which a staircase tower was built. In front of the gate a trap gate could be lowered, the lower holders of which were still visible until 1945.
Presumably the tower was disrupted by French troops in 1689, who, according to the instructions of the French minister of war, Louvois, had to defuse or burn all the fixed squares along the right bank of the Rhine.
Also the Koblenz gate tower and the tower above the Vacheor will have fallen victim to this measure. The lower half of the staircase tower remained intact until the 19th century. The Kirchtor's gateway was also preserved, and was only blown up by the SS divisions in the last war days of the Second World War to impede the Americans' advance, which was a militarily absurd measure, not only with a view to the early end of the war. Because it was hard to doubt, the blasting of the church door was sometimes falsely attributed to the American forces.
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