Orthanc

Orthanc stands at the center of Isengard's ring wall, in the Wizard's Vale below Methedras. The name means Mount Fang in elvish and Cunning Mind in the tongue of Rohan.

The Men of Gondor raised it in their strength out of four pillars of black rock fused together, so hard that neither the Ents nor any weapon of the war could scratch it. A stair runs up inside to a flat summit marked with astronomical signs and open to the sky. In a chamber below was kept a palantír, one of the seven seeing-stones, and through it Saruman looked into Barad-dûr once too often.

Gandalf was held on that summit from July to September TA 3018 after refusing Saruman's offer, and was carried off by the eagle Gwaihir. After the Ents flooded Isengard in March TA 3019, Saruman was shut inside the tower he could not be pried out of, until Treebeard tired of guarding him and let him walk away. Wormtongue threw the palantír from a window at the parley, and it came into Aragorn's keeping.

Events at this place

1. TA 3018, July 10 · The Lord of the Rings

   Gandalf held on the pinnacle

   Saruman imprisoned Gandalf on the roof of Orthanc for two months. Gwaihir the eagle carried him away on 18 September.

2. TA 3019, March 5 · The Lord of the Rings

   The palantír thrown down

   During the parley at the flooded gate, Wormtongue hurled the seeing-stone from a window of Orthanc at the company below.

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