Minaret (Lednice)
The minaret (also: Turkish tower , mosque tower or Babylonian tower ) is a staffage building in the park of the Lednice Castle (formerly: Eisgrub Castle ) in Lednice , Czech Republic , part of the Lednice-Valtice cultural landscape and thus part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the same name .
history
The minaret was built from 1797 to 1804 according to plans by Joseph Hardtmuth on behalf of Alois I von Liechtenstein . It stood at the end of one of the eight avenues and viewing aisles that formed the hunting star of the game reserve at Schloss Eisgrub and each of which was given such an optical reference point at its end. The minaret was the most exotic and elaborate of these staffage structures.
When the park was transformed into an English landscape garden after 1805, the line of sight between Eisgrub Castle and the minaret was one of the few horticultural elements that remained from the previous garden design.
building
Due to the swampy terrain, it was very difficult to erect the building in a stable manner. Its foundation rests on hundreds of iron-studded wooden posts , several wooden gratings and a final layer of stone slabs. Only then was the foundation bricked up. In total, the minaret cost almost a million guilders .
The building is strictly symmetrical. The ground floor of the building has a square floor plan, which is surrounded by an arcade . The first floor is also based on the square floor plan. Only then does the minaret rise more than 60 meters in the middle. The tower is divided into four segments: the two lower segments have an octagonal cross-section, the ones above are cylindrical. The segments are separated from each other by surrounding balconies. The minaret is crowned by a dome and the crescent moon . 302 steps lead to the upper, third balcony of the tower. Twelve turrets and four domes rise above the cornice of the two lower floors. Originally, the tower was surrounded by a terrace with four corner pavilions. These were demolished in the course of the redevelopment of the park into an English landscape park in 1810. The building is painted and provided with moralizing inscriptions in Arabic script . The same applies to the eight halls that - next to the staircase - occupy the first floor.
Functionally, the building is on the one hand a point of reference for various lines of sight out of and into the park, and on the other it is a viewing tower. From the tower the view extends over the entire park area to Břeclav to the east and Mikulov to the west.
Worth knowing
Similar large “Moorish” buildings in parks are the mosque in the Royal Botanic Gardens and the mosque in the Schwetzingen palace gardens .
See also
literature
- NN: Lednice minaret . In: Wiener Zeitung of May 30, 2005.
- Pavel Zatloukal (eds.), Pŕemysl Krejčiŕik and Ondŕej Zatloukal: The Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape . Foibos Books, Prague 2012.
Web links
- Zámek Lednice (German)
Individual evidence
- ^ Zatloukal: Die Kulturlandschaft , p. 104.
- ^ Zatloukal: Die Kulturlandschaft , p. 101.
- ^ Zatloukal: Die Kulturlandschaft , p. 107.
- ^ Zatloukal: Die Kulturlandschaft , p. 107.
- ↑ NN: The minaret .
- ^ Zatloukal: Die Kulturlandschaft , p. 107.
Coordinates: 48 ° 48 ′ 51 ″ N , 16 ° 48 ′ 45.4 ″ E