Wok's Tower, Gothic tower in Zamkowy Square, Prudnik, Poland.
Wok's Tower is a cylindrical defensive tower on Zamkowy Square in Prudnik, the only remnant of the former Wogendrossel Castle. Its walls, 4 to 5 m thick at the base, are built of greywacke from the Opawskie Mountains. The base is about 12.5 m in diameter; the top is octagonal, closed by a wooden gallery and a pyramidal roof. A stone-framed door opening sits high on the north side.
The tower was built in the 13th century as part of Prudnik Castle, founded by the Czech nobleman Wok of Rožemberk. It was managed by Henry of Rožemberk from 1262, when the perimeter walls and residential building were constructed. In 1428, during the Hussite wars, the castle was first destroyed. The tower is the only remaining part of the castle complex.
The name Wogendrossel, meaning Wok's Rose, comes from the tower's founder Wok of Rožemberk, whose coat of arms bore a rose. After the castle was demolished in the 19th century, the name survived for the tower alone. In the 1990s journalist Antoni Weigt popularised the Polish name Wieża Woka.
The tower reopened to visitors in 2010 after a conservation overhaul, and around 3,500 tourists climbed it each year. It was closed again in April 2023 because the wooden staircase added in 2009 had deteriorated. The viewing platform sits on a wooden structure under a wooden helm roof reached by an external wooden stair.
The tower's only entrance is a door opening set high on the north side, framed in stone; it was reached by a wooden ladder or bridge that could be removed during a siege. Inside, a 13 m deep shaft 2 m across served as a hunger dungeon, entered through a hole in its vault.
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