Stair tower
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A stair tower (also a stair tower or spiral stone ) is a tower-like part of a building built on a round or polygonal floor plan , which contains a staircase - usually with a spiral staircase .
construction
Stair towers are usually presented to the front of a building or inserted into an angle. In rarer cases - mostly in three-aisled churches - the lower part was inside the church, whereas the upper part was visible from the outside (e.g. the former abbey church of Saint-Menoux ). Originally they were only accessible from inside the main building (church, castle); since the Renaissance the entrance was regularly in the courtyard. Stair towers have a structure that is largely independent of the main building .
history
Only a few examples of stair towers are known from ancient times (e.g. at the Kaiserthermen in Trier ); Stairways were superfluous in the often single-storey buildings or they were housed in the outer walls of the buildings, which are often several meters thick. This tradition also persisted at defense towers ( donjons ) as well as churches and castles of the early and high Middle Ages; it only changed with the increased construction of purpose-oriented and altogether little decorative stair towers in the high and late Middle Ages ( Romanesque , Gothic ).
Since the Renaissance , stair towers have become much more decorative and prestigious - from then on, stairs were hardly hidden or outsourced, but there were both artfully designed winding and straight staircases inside the building with rich ceiling and banister decorations (e.g. Chambord Castle , Palazzo Barberini or Azay-le-Rideau Castle or Chenonceau Castle ). With the strengthened construction of straight staircases with intermediate landing ( stairwell ), separately standing stair towers gradually became increasingly rare.
Reinforced concrete stair towers are still used for high industrial buildings such as boiler houses in coal-fired power plants.
Examples
- Germany
- Albrechtsburg , Meissen
- Lutherhaus , Wittenberg , Germany
- Commander 's villa of the Mürwik Naval School , Flensburg - Mürwik , Schleswig-Holstein
- Latscha building, Frankfurt - Ostend , Hesse
- Dresden Residenzschloss , Dresden
- Bertholdsburg Castle , Schleusingen , Thuringia
- Hartenfels Castle , Torgau
- Johannisburg Castle , Aschaffenburg , Franconia
- Köthen Castle ( Anhalt )
- Weitersroda Castle , Hildburghausen , Thuringia
- Wilhelmsburg Castle , Schmalkalden , Thuringia
- Ermreuth Castle
- France
- former Saint-Menoux abbey church
- Blois castle , Loire department
- Chambord Castle , Loire department
- Tanlay Castle , Yonne department
See also
- Traboule , a special form of the stair tower
literature
- Hans Koepf , Günther Binding : Picture Dictionary of Architecture (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 194). 4th, revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-520-19404-X .
