Rottenbuch Radio Tower
Wooden telecommunications tower in Germany
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Rottenbuch Radio Tower is a transmitting tower of the Vodafone company, sited between Peiting and Rottenbuch in southern Bavaria, Germany.
The first tower at the site was a wooden lattice tower, which was realized as glued girder binder construction made from European Douglas fir timber. It had a height of 66 meters (with lightning arresters on the top 71 metres [1]).[2] Its structure was held together by steel pegs.
On 18 March 2002, its construction started with the excavation of the tower foundations; on 3 June 2002 building of its structure started. For this the lower elements of the framework construction were pre-assembled in pairs and then put in place. The missing diagonal elements were then added afterwards. On 21 June 2002, its strucure was topped-out.[3] At time of completion, Rottenbuch Radio Tower was the highest wooden tower in Germany[4] and the fifth-tallest wooden structure in the world. It remained the tallest wooden structure in Germany until 2012, when a 100 metres tall wooden tower for Hannover-Marienwerder Wind Turbine was built.[5]
In July 2020 a newspaper report said that the tower has to be demolished due to irreparable damage by ants. It was planned until 2022 to replace it by a new tower[6] In December 2020 it was decided to realize the replacement tower as steel lattice structure.[7] The construction of the 69 metres tall replacement tower started on May 14th, 2024 and in May 2025 it was topped-out.
The old wooden tower was demolished in spring 2026 piece by piece with a mobile crane.
