"Tor". Another attraction from its ancient industrial past is the "Old Crane" of Andernach (Ger. der "Alte Krahnen"), a 16th-century stony land based treadwheel tower crane in diameter and high situated outside the town downstream close to the river bank of the old harbour where it replaced an even older 14th century wooden floating treadwheel crane. For 350 years it was in operation from 1561 to 1911. Two to four men were required to rotate the crane top by means of a huge double ended lever (horizontal wooden bar) attached to the vertical wooden crane "beam" and four others on a (treadwheel men or menials) to operate the huge wooden twin treadwheels (more than in diameter) which lifted and lowered the load—mainly millstones, tuff-stone blocks for the Netherlands and wine casks. This treadwheel crane with stone walls (most cranes had a timber housing) is one of only a few of its kind in Europe to have survived. A prince-electoral order or permission was needed to build and operate such a crane in the times of the Holy Roman Empire. The Catholic "St. Mary Assumption Parish Church" locally known as "Church of Our Lady" or "St. Mary's Cathedral" (Ger. "Pfarrkirche Maria Himmelfahrt", "Liebfrauenkirche", or "Mariendom") is the oldest historical attraction in Andernach, some of which date back to the 11th century. The town palais "von der Leyen house" (Ger. "Haus von der Leyen"), named after its builder district magistrate and governor of the prince-elector, "Georg III von der Leyen," dates back to 1600. Built in renaissance and baroque styles it now houses the town museum since 1936 and again since 1969. It displays among others a fine model of the Roman "castrum" Antunnacum, a 17th-century town model in ~1:600 scale and a thoroughly assembled model (~1:90) of the prince-electoral town castle. One of Andernach's natural attractions is the world's highest (max. ) cold-water geyser, driven by carbon dioxide with force generated in a fashion similar to that in a shaken bottle of table water. It is located a little less than half a mile downstream from the "Crane" in the Nature Reserve of "Namedyer Werth" (MHG for "island of Namedy") now a peninsula. Activated for the first time in 1903, the geyser was shut down in 1957 but reactivated early in the current century as yet another city attraction. Jewish history In the 12th century, Benjamin of Tudela described Andernach as