Groningen, Martini tower The Martini Tower, standing on the Grote Markt, is the tallest tower in the city of Groningen at 96.8 metres. The tower belongs to the Martini Church. To the stadjers, the inhabitants of the city, the tower is nicknamed d' Olle Grieze, Gronings for the old grey. The current Martinitoren had two predecessors. The first tower was built in the 13th century. It was about 30 metres high and entirely in Romano-Gothic style. The 13th-century city seal of Groningen shows a picture of the tower. It originally stood to the west of the church, but due to the extension of the northern and southern aisles of the Martini Church to the west, it had become walled-in.
The tower had a pyramid-shaped tent roof and two round-arched bell holes. A lightning strike in 1408 destroyed this tower. From 1430, the church was extended in Gothic style, with the construction of a second tower about 45 metres high, which was partly made of stone and partly of wood, also beginning in 1452.
The church walls were erected against the tower in 1461. On the Tuesday after Easter in 1465, a big fire raged in the tower as a result of a 'groet thunder and blyxem', according to Sicke Benninghe's chronicle. Possibly as a result, the tower collapsed in 1468 and with it all the annexes around it.
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