Tour de Sassenage, Tower and fire lookout tower in Grenoble, France

The tour de Sassenage is a 22-metre-high watchtower on rue du Pont-Saint-Jaime in Grenoble. Its base is stone and the rest pink brick, with walls up to one metre thick. Narrow vertical slit openings pierce the curved wall, and a conical tiled roof caps the tower.

The tower dates from around 1268 and belonged to the Chaulnais family before the Sassenage family acquired it in 1301, giving it the name it still carries. Over centuries it passed through several owners and lost its surrounding fortified house, leaving only this lookout structure behind.

The name comes from the Sassenage family, who bought the tower in 1301; before that it was called tour du Verdaret, after the stream crossed by the pont Saint-Jaime. Its pink brick matches Notre-Dame cathedral, the bishop's palace and the church of Saint-André, all built in the same period.

The tower stands on rue du Pont-Saint-Jaime, a narrow pedestrian lane linking place Lavalette to rue Chenoise, opposite the corner with rue de Lorraine. It belongs to a private property and cannot be visited; a plaque on the wall facing that corner marks its presence. The nearest tram stop is Notre-Dame Musée on line B, at place Lavalette, also served by bus lines 16 and 62.

A small plaque on the wall across the street is one of the only ways to identify the tower, since the entrance is tucked away within a private building. Many passersby do not realize that this simple corner structure was once used to spot fires and approaching trouble from outside the old city.