Kiek in de Kök is an old German language

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 nickname for towers, mainly those which were parts of town fortifications. They gained the name from the ability of the tower occupants to literally see what's cooking in the kitchens of nearby houses.

Due to the history of the Hanseatic League

Hanseatic League

The Hanseatic League was an economic alliance of trading cities and their merchant guilds that dominated trade along the coast of Northern Europe...

 and the Teutonic Order, also towers far outside modern Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 bear this name, like in Gdańsk

Gdansk

Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...

 and Tallinn.

The tower located in Tallinn

Tallinn

Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...

 is an artillery

Artillery

Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...

 tower

Tower

A tower is a tall structure, usually taller than it is wide, often by a significant margin. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires....

 built in 1475. It is 38 m high and has walls 4 m thick. Cannon ball

Round shot

Round shot is a solid projectile without explosive charge, fired from a cannon. As the name implies, round shot is spherical; its diameter is slightly less than the bore of the gun it is fired from.Round shot was made in early times from dressed stone, but by the 17th century, from iron...

s dating back to 1577 are still embedded in its outer walls.

Working life

Throughout its working life, the tower was extensively remodelled. Work in the 16th and 17th centuries saw the two lowest floors become hidden by earth works and the upper floors receive new gun openings and the uppermost floor a new outer wall and ceiling. By 1760, the tower had become obsolete. At this time it became a repository for archives and some floors were converted to apartments.

Historic site

20th century restoration work saw the tower and surrounding area returned to a more historical look. The tower now serves as a museum

Museum

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

and photographic gallery.

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