Wood Tower

Not long after 350, in the course of the abandonment of the Roman camp, this wall was lowered and rubble (spolia) from earlier construction used to enlarge and strengthen it.

After the Romans withdrew, it was improved at various times, particularly in the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, becoming what archaeologists studying the city have called the "Roman-Carolingian" wall.

[2] However, Mainz was an important political and strategic ally in the Hohenstaufens' struggle for supremacy in the German Empire against the Welfs, and so in c. 1190–1200 the city was granted permission to rebuild the defences.

Busts of couples appear above two windows on the first floor on the city side of the tower: a burgher and his wife and a king and queen.

Thus in 1793, after the reconquest of the previously French city of Mayence by Prussia, so-called 'Clubists', members of the Jacobin club who had organised the Republic of Mainz, were imprisoned in the Wood Tower.

But its most prominent inmates were Johannes Bückler, known as 'Schinderhannes', and the members of his gang, who spent more than 15 months there before being guillotined under French law in November 1803 on what had been the grounds of the Electoral Palace of Favorite.