Gender tower

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The gender towers in San Gimignano

The gender Tower is in the late Middle Ages in Italy , in Tuscany served resulting design, which influential urban families for residential and defense purposes. As can be seen on some old cityscapes in Schedel's world chronicle , the tower construction was used at the end of the 13th century north of the Alps in some trading cities that had become rich through trade with Italy, such as B. Nuremberg , Constance and Regensburg copied. The towers here were not used for residential or defensive purposes, but rather had a representative character and served to represent wealth and influence. Only in Regensburg have multiple towers preserved, including the full-size Golden Tower .

history

The two towers Asinelli and Garisenda in Bologna

The gender towers were built in the feudal epoch of the 12th and 13th centuries, at the same time as the mountain peace of rural castles, from which they had borrowed their shape, but often slimmer and higher due to the lack of altitude and the narrowness of the cities.

The northern Italian gentry , who previously Ministerialendienst to the castles or festivities houses done his lords and interests of customs revenues collected and the modest duties of the serfs , serfs and tenants had lived, felt by the growing prosperity of the bourgeois patricians in the cities challenged For his part, he moved to the cities at an early age and also began to be commercially active and to set up trading houses or banking operations - in stark contrast to the feudal aristocracy in the rest of Europe, who were forbidden from trading or business activities when threatened with loss of status. Nevertheless maintained this noble families beginning their chivalrous , feud usual way of life in and brought 1150-1250 with its famous towers, the fortificatory construction of the keep , tower castle and residential tower and thus their feudal power and status symbols of inner city into the narrow streets. Merchants and bankers tried to keep up and also built towers. The higher a family's tower was built, the higher the prestige of that sex. The towers were often attached to houses or palazzi that served as a residence in peacetime.

The base of the towers is usually square and the height is different. The towers were fortified on the inside, and each higher floor, which usually consisted of only one room, was reached via ladders or rope ladders that could be pulled up in the event of a siege. Weapons, pitch , water and supplies were stored on the upper floors, and in the event of a feud, probably also the coin reserves. Some of the towers are also provided with gargoyles that could be used for attacks on besiegers with hot oil, water and the like.

Most of the towers were built in Italy around 1200. As early as the 13th and 14th centuries, many were either demolished or dismantled, others collapsed. The towers were later used as stores, apartments or shops or were used as dungeons .

Many buildings were already destroyed in inner-city conflicts in the Middle Ages. Others fell victim to urban development projects or were eventually demolished due to dilapidation. However, most of the towers have been shortened over time and integrated into the lower floors of new houses. In Florence, on closer inspection, many such tower stumps can still be seen; During the Second World War , many of the towers that had been preserved there were destroyed in bombing raids.

Cities with gender towers

Bologna in the 11th century with around 180 family towers (illustration from 1917)
Perugia 1454 (fresco by Benedetto Bonfigli )

The city with most of the family towers preserved in full is San Gimignano in Tuscany with 15 towers that can be seen from afar. There were once around 200 towers in Florence ; but many of them collapsed because the builders wanted to go too high, sometimes over 70 meters; Earthquakes did theirs. As early as 1250, the city administration was forced to limit the height of the towers to 27.5 meters - which corresponds to about 9 floors - what was above had to be reduced to this level. Furthermore, the owners were given to live in the towers so that they were not used as weapon stores. About 40 such tower stumps still exist in Florence.

In Bologna 20 towers or their stumps are still preserved from the original 180; two of the best known are the crooked Due Torri ( Asinelli , 97 m, and Garisenda , 48 m). In Siena there are still about 15 sex towers to be seen, in Volterra six, in Pisa three. Of the 250 towers in Lucca , the famous Guinigiturm has been preserved. With the exception of one, the 50 towers in Perugia had to be demolished by papal orders after a rebellion in 1531. There are also a few surviving family towers in Rome, for example the Torre dei Capocci .

In Germany, gender towers can still be found several times in Regensburg . There in the 13th century the imperial city patriciate, who had become rich through trade, took the towers in Italy as a model to present wealth, sophistication, influence and importance to the outside world. With a few exceptions ( Golden Tower , Baumburger Turm ), many towers in Regensburg (Bräunelturm, Kappelmayerturm, Kastenmayerturm, Zanthausturm) were later mostly cut to ridge height.

Of the 65 family towers that existed in Nuremberg around 1430 , only the Nassau house has survived today.

In addition, a three-story family tower has been preserved in Esslingen am Neckar as a clearly recognizable core of a building that was later enlarged . This building is now used as a city museum and can therefore also be visited inside.

See also

literature

  • Klaus Tragbar: From the sex tower to the town house. Studies on the origin, typology and urban development aspects of medieval residential construction in Tuscany (around 1100 to 1350) (= contributions to the history of art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 10). Rhema-Verlag, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-930454-22-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b Gender Towers on historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de, accessed on February 3, 2020