Siege Tower

The siege tower was a movable, often multi-story wooden structure, typically mounted on wheels or rollers, built to allow attacking troops to approach a fortified wall under protective cover and either scale it directly via a drawbridge or ladder or provide an elevated firing platform against defenders. Though siege towers had ancient origins, including Assyrian and Hellenistic examples such as the enormous Helepolis employed at the siege of Rhodes in 305 BC, the weapon saw sustained and widespread use across medieval Europe and the Crusader states, where towers were built on campaign from locally available timber to overcome castle and city walls. A siege tower's defining tactical value was neutralizing a wall's height advantage, letting attackers cross at the top rather than breach at the base, and defenders responded with countermeasures including incendiary projectiles aimed at a tower's wooden frame and reinforced wall sections built specifically to block a tower's approach. The weapon remained a standard element of medieval siege warfare until gunpowder artillery made breaching walls from a distance more practical than approaching them directly.