The Mouse Tower — Mäuseturm — stands on a small island in the Rhine near Bingen, Germany, and has been associated since the medieval period with the legend of Archbishop Hatto II of Mainz, supposedly devoured by mice as divine punishment for burning grain-hoarding peasants alive. The story is almost certainly apocryphal; the tower was built in the 10th century as a Rhine toll station, and "Maus" likely derives from the Old German word for customs duty rather than rodents. Solomon Islands has issued this piece under its ongoing series of miniature gold coins featuring European historical curiosities, a prolific program that has produced dozens of sub-half-gram issues since the mid-2010s.
The Mouse Tower — Mäuseturm — stands on a small island in the Rhine near Bingen, Germany, and has been associated since the medieval period with the legend of Archbishop Hatto II of Mainz, supposedly devoured by mice as divine punishment for burning grain-hoarding peasants alive. The story is almost certainly apocryphal; the tower was built in the 10th century as a Rhine toll station, and "Maus" likely derives from the Old German word for customs duty rather than rodents. Solomon Islands has issued this piece under its ongoing series of miniature gold coins featuring European historical curiosities, a prolific program that has produced dozens of sub-half-gram issues since the mid-2010s.