Tour César (Provins)

A tower on this site is recorded in a charter of 1137. It was rebuilt under Henry the Liberal (1152–1181). A symbol of the power and authority of the Counts of Champagne, it is an octagon set within a 17.60-metre square, with a semicylindrical turret at each corner. The other faces of the octagon are flanked by a buttress topped by a bartizan. The whole is surrounded by an oval fortification, filled in during the fifteenth century. The tower was entered by a postern above the first, domed level; a ramp then led to the second level, also domed on squinches. The third level, which keeps its crenellated wall-walk, was reached by a staircase built into the 4-metre-thick wall. From the twelfth century, the tower served as a prison and arsenal, and in the second half of the thirteenth century, with the decline of the counts' power, as a prison. Its defences were reinforced in the fifteenth century by the English. The roofs were added in the sixteenth century. Since 1693, the tower has housed the bells of the collegiate church of Saint-Quiriace. From 1875 to 1979, the lower hall held the upper town's water reservoir. Since 1981, the tower has carried at its top the dragon, emblem of the upper town, that of the lower town being the lizard.

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