This Tower Closed off the Harbour at La Rochelle | Tour de la Chaîne

Welcome back to La Rochelle. Last week we visited the Tour Saint-Nicolas, today we hop over to the other side of the harbour channel to check out its little brother: the Tour de la Chaîne. It used to house the mechanism to raise and lower the chain which closed off the harbour. Quite obvious where it got its name then. During the age of Protestantism it became a mausoleum for prominent Protestant leaders. Later still, it was used as gunpowder storage and that’s when it went BOOM. The tower exploded and was left as a smoking ruin for 300 years. In the last 100 or so years it has been reconstructed, though lower than it used to be. Still it’s a magnificent piece of history and worth a look!
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Sources:
www.tours-la-r...
fr.wikipedia.o...
www.larochelle...
www.tours-la-r...
Bonnin, J.-C. & Faucherre, N. The Towers of La Rochelle. Paris, 2004.
Credits:
Music:
Tam Lin by Alexander Nakarada (www.creatorchords.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License
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[@jared1870]

I love my virtual weekly history hike. Thank you!

[@TheHistoryHikers]

We love our weekly Jared comment. Thank you!

[@jasminmaria2]

Hello from Brazil. Fantastic video. Beautiful La Rochelle. Beautiful Tower ☕️. Excellent work

[@TheHistoryHikers]

Thanks a lot for joining us!

[@charlenefriesen5050]

Very much enjoying these adventures in La Rochelle! What an incredible area of the world...

[@TheHistoryHikers]

One more to go! We loved visiting this city

[@wendybell422]

Lovely took me back to when I visited 30 years ago beautiful 😍

[@TheHistoryHikers]

That means it was around the time they finished the reconstruction? 😊🤔

[@robodrone5662]

Great trip 👍

[@TheHistoryHikers]

Thanks a lot!

[@lil-mumma-adventures]

Hey team! ❤ this is awesome

[@TheHistoryHikers]

Thanks for joining us!

[@markclemens3409]

When Louis XIII and Richelieu besieged La Rochelle, they ordered the building of an enormous mole that cut off access to the sea. (There's a famous painting of Richelieu in armor at the siege.) Breaching the mole would have been one of the first orders of business after the city surrendered. It would be interesting to know how long the remains of the mole survived. Maybe they carted all of it away immediately after the surrender, but I doubt it.

[@TheHistoryHikers]

We did not know that. Moving that much dirt and rubble must have taken quite some time...