Tour des Voleurs (Thieves' Tower) & Torture Museum
Most visitors photograph the Dolder and move on, never discovering that a second medieval tower stands just 200 metres away at the southern end of the village. The Tour des Voleurs — Tower of Thieves — houses a surprisingly well-preserved torture museum that is equal parts chilling and historically illuminating.
What's Inside the Tower
The tower dates from the 13th century and served as the village prison until the Revolution. Its three floors display original instruments of interrogation and punishment — the strappado, the iron maiden, the pillory — all with bilingual French-German interpretation panels that place each object in its judicial context rather than sensationalising it.
A narrow spiral staircase connects the floors, and the top level opens onto a small parapet with a view down the Rue du Général de Gaulle that is almost as good as the Dolder's, with far fewer people sharing it.
Why It's Overlooked and Why That's a Gift
The Tour des Voleurs appears on fewer tourist maps than the Dolder, which means you can often have the entire building to yourself on a weekday morning. The guardian, when present, is a font of local knowledge and will happily explain which 16th-century Riquewihr burghers ended up here and why.
Combined with the Dolder, this makes a compact 90-minute medieval-history circuit that costs less than €5 total and covers 700 years of village life.
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