Eben-Ezer Tower, Eben-Emael, Bassenge, Liège, Belgium
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TeamYakara
N 50° 46.573 E 005° 38.975
31U E 686800 N 5628286
Of an unusual and unexpected character, the Tower of Eben-Ezer is full of thoroughly thought symbolic: nothing in its construction has been built at random!
Waymark Code: WMYZG7
Location: Liège, Belgium
Date Posted: 08/15/2018
Views: 5
Eben-Ezer Tower, also known as the Museum of Flint (French:Musée du Silex), is a tower and museum in Eben-Emael, in the municipality of Bassenge in eastern Belgium.
Constructed by one man, Robert Garcet (1912-2001), between 1951 and 1965, the tower is a fantastical construction built of flint rubble, and with dimensions and symbolism taken from the bible and from ancient civilisations.
The tower is conspicuously topped at its four corners by large stone sculptures of the four cherubim of the Apocalypse: a bull on the north-west turret, man, in the form of a sphinx in the south-west, a lion in the south-east and an eagle at the north-east corner.
Some of the seven floors of the tower are open to the public. The first few levels, the 'museum of flint', explain the history and use of the stone.
As a work of outsider architecture, the tower was featured in episode 3 of Jarvis Cocker's 1999 series, Journeys into The Outside. Cocker visited the tower and interviewed Robert Garcet.
Towers, such as the Tower of Babel, the Ziggurats or the dungeons of the Middle Age, have always symbolized the link between mankind and gods. Indeed, these constructions anchor their foundations in the depths of earth and soar towards the sky. So, they realize the symbolic connection between the underworld, the surface and the gods’ domain.
By analogy, the Tower of Eben-Ezer is the way given to humans to reach other spheres through knowledge.
The Tower of Eben-Ezer represents Humanity as symbolized in the Bible by the Heavenly Jerusalem, mythical city with its sides of 12.000 stadiums (2160 km). With a much smaller space at his disposal, Robert GARCET nevertheless maintained this proportion in his work: the sides of the Tower of Eben-Ezer measure 12 meters
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