Filzengrabentor

Besides its defensive role, the gate handled goods from the ships and boats that moored here, with the wine and timber trades playing a major part. Records from 1370/80 note restrictions on timber storage near the gate, and in 1555 the foreshore in front of it was widened. Closed after dark, the gate was under the authority of the burgrave, who had it opened at night when needed – for instance for the workers colloquially known as "gold diggers," employed by the executioner to empty latrines. The council had decreed that their loads could pass only through the Neugasse gate and the Filzengrabentor in order to be tipped into the Rhine.

The Filzengrabentor was a square tower with a pointed-arch gateway facing the Rhine, framed by a round-arched blind arch, and a low arched passage on the city side. The upper floor, fitted with cross windows, originally carried a crenellated top and later a plain hipped roof. On the north side stood an added stair tower with an oriel. Shrine records from 1494 describe a dwelling on the upper floor, linked to the city wall by two wall walks.

In 1744 H. Schölgen had the gate tower enlarged by the master builder Nikolaus Krakamp; until 1834 it served as a flour weighing station – hence the name "Mehlpförtchen" (little flour gate) for a smaller passage nearby. Repeated raising of the ground level around Lyskirchen/Filzengraben had lifted the surface so much that the historiographer Aegidius Gelenius already described the gate as "subterranea" (underground) in the 17th century; by the time of demolition the passage retained a clearance of only three metres. In 1854 the medieval structure was torn down and replaced by a brick gate building. Nothing of the Filzengrabentor survives today.