Astronomical tower

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The term astronomical tower or mathematical tower was previously used as a synonym for observatories when they reached the height of several floors. These structures, mostly between 15 and 30 meters high, were not only a place for astronomical observations , but also a kind of status symbol . Some of them also housed scientific museums or libraries, sometimes also the physical wonder chambers that became increasingly popular from the 17th century .

history

Antiquity

Even in early antiquity there were temples or other representative buildings, the upper floor of which served as an observation platform for court or priest astronomers. Examples are some Babylonian ziggurats , Central American step temples and probably the Tower of Babel as well . In Greece, the 13 m high, octagonal Tower of the Winds (Athens) probably served as an observatory, which the astronomer Andronikos of Kyrrhos in the 1st century BC. Built.

Heyday of Islam

The design of the observatories, which were used in the cultural heyday from Arabia to Persia to the Mongols, is not exactly known. They too probably had stable platforms on observation towers, which is indicated by the accuracy of the wall quadrants and other measurements, as well as the obliqueness of the ecliptic . Important locations from the 9th to 13th centuries were a. Baghdad , Alexandria, Shiraz or Samarkand (see Large Sextant from Ulug Begs Observatory 1425), and in Spain the Alfonso X observatory in Toledo around 1250.

Europe of the modern age

In other parts of Europe, such buildings with ancient and Arab influences did not emerge until the late Middle Ages, including the tower of Heinrich von Langenstein at the Herzogskolleg in Vienna in the 14th century .

However, the following served as a model for many later tower observatories:

  • the Tower of the Winds in the Vatican, the 73 m high observation platform of the first Vatican observatory . It was added from 1578–1580 to the four-story wing that is now used for the Vatican Library and named after the Athens model;
  • the mathematical tower of the Kremsmünster observatory from 1749. The 50-meter-high building, built by the Kremsmünster Benedictine Abbey , is considered the world's first high-rise . It served as an observatory until the early 20th century and as a weather station with the longest data series to this day . The lower floors of the tower housed art collections and various museums. All four aspects show that the Benedictines are open to new developments in science and art;
  • the tower of the Clementinum of the Jesuits in Prague (around 1700). It became the model for some early university observatories .

From around 1600 similar towers were built for many observatories of universities, monasteries and buildings of the nobility . Such buildings include:

Picture gallery

  • Illumination around 1400: Herzogskolleg in Vienna

  • Old Vienna University with observation tower, ~ 1760

  • Tower of the Winds, Vatican (center)

  • "Mathematical Tower", Kremsmünster

  • Prague Clementinum

  • Mannheim observatory

  • Zwehrenturm, Kassel

  • Leipzig Pleißenburg

  • Brera-Sterwarte, Milan

  • Göttingen observatory

  • Sukharev Tower, Moscow

literature

  • Günter D. Roth : Cosmos of astronomy history: astronomers, instruments, discoveries . Kosmos-Verlag, Stuttgart 1987
  • W. Foerster: Weltall und Menschheit Volume III (chapter on the history of astronomy, p. 82–150), Berlin-Leipzig-Vienna 1902
  • Otto Wutzel: 1200 years of Kremsmünster , p. 214 ff On the history of the observatory . Upper Austrian provincial government, Linz 1977

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Demel: European history of the 18th century , p. 150, Kohlhammer 2000.