Deep in the Dungeons - Germany Day 18

Today we went on a tour through the Nürnberg dungeons. ( 5th August )

Walking through the dark and narrow dungeons, I managed to hit my head multiple times and trip over the wooden beams on the ground, if I was a prisoner, I would have been unconscious by the time I got the torture room...

"The rack" where the prisoners were stretched.

Thumb shackles where the prisoners had their thumbs crushed.

Some of the torture devices.

Pretty bad photo quality, but this is the torture room. Where the prisoners were brutally tortured for their crime. They were tortured until they confessed and would confess freely, but this caused many innocents to confess and take the blame. There were several types of torture, the types included whipping with a leather whip, scorching the soles of the feet and the armpits, applying thumb screws, hoisting by the hands ( tied behind the back ) for hours with weights attached to their legs, tying on the rack and stretching, and pouring burning pitch or sulphur on naked parts of the body.

We also went through the prison cells, and learnt about the different punishments for the different crimes:

• beheading by the sword: for manslaughter or breach of peace
• hanging for thieves
• breaking with the wheel ( 40 blows with the rim of the wheel, followed by the coup de grâce 89ce in the heart or the throat) : for murder
• burning alive for forgery, heresy, arson
• burning alive (later drawing in a sack) for mothers who had murdered their children

The prisoners were not killed in these prisons, they were sent outside the city walls for execution ( around 10km walk ) and had weights of up to 60kg around their legs so on the way to the execution they could not escape.