Reconstructed Limes watchtower Wp 4/49 near Grüningen, Pohlheim, Germany

Reconstructed Limes watchtower Wp 4/49, Pohlheim · Wikimedia Commons

Limes Watchtower 4-49

Limeswachturm Wp 4/49

Signal TowerGermania Superior · near Gruningen, Pohlheim, GermanyBuilt 100 CE

About

Watchtower 4/49 stood on the Wetterau stretch of the Limes Germanicus, part of a chain of roughly nine hundred wooden lookout posts spaced under a kilometer apart along the cleared frontier road between the Rhine and the Danube. Its original timber tower predates Hadrian's later wooden palisade by two decades; a full-scale reconstruction now stands on the excavated stone footings near Giessen.

What happened here

A small stone tower with a timber top, sited so that it can see the next one along the line. Half a dozen men live in it. They watch the ground in front, and they watch the tower on either side. A signal — fire and smoke at night, something visible by day — passes a warning down the chain far faster than a rider can, though it can only carry a message that was agreed in advance. The rest of the time it is a lookout post on a road, a river crossing or a frontier line, and the work is boredom punctuated by inspections. Supplies come up from the fort behind. Towers on a frontier stand within sight of each other for hundreds of miles.