Malakow Tower Emil Mine (Mechernich)

Unfortunately, you can only visit it from the outside. Only on very few occasions can you look inside.

As Malakow tower (also Malakoff tower, rare Malakov tower) refers primarily mining towers in the mining industry with a characteristic design, which were common in the shaft promotion in the 1850s to 1870s in continental Europe, but occasionally even to the Built at the end of the 19th century.

The structures are massive masonry towers with a fortress-like architecture. The sturdy construction of up to three meters thick brickwork and a stiffened construction in the interior made it possible to hold the heavy pulleys and absorb the enormous pulling forces of the carriers. The mighty towers were to be found in the districts of the Ruhr area, the Saarland, in Saxony, Lower and Upper Silesia, and in the Aachen area, but also occasionally in Belgium and France. They were mainly used in hard coal mining and ore and potash mining.

Malakov towers were replaced as the predominant form of construction with welded steel frameworks, after sufficient steel was available and technically able to construct such large scaffoldings cost-effectively.

Source: Wikipedia

Last surviving shaft structure from the Mechernicher mining period.