Spalentor

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The front of the Spalentor
19th century photography

The Spalentor is a former city ​​gate of the city of Basel and, as a successor to the Spal Candle Arch, which was demolished in 1838, an earlier part of the Basel city wall . It is one of the three city gates that still exist today and is a listed building . It is considered to be one of the most beautiful city gates in Switzerland.

history

In October 1356 a great earthquake turned old Basel into a heap of rubble. The people of Basel at the time started to rebuild their homes. They immediately surrounded their newly built Rhine city with a high wall belt and a moat in front of it, including the suburbs in the wall ring. They reinforced the curtain wall with over 40 defensive towers; 7 of them were gate towers and the Spalentor is one of them. It looks out over the large approach path that led from France to the Rhine city, and protected the Spalenvorstadt behind the gate.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the city wall stunted Basel's growth and was viewed as restrictive and outdated. So they started to tear down the curtain wall, and most of the towers, gates and walls were torn down and disappeared from the modern cityscape. In addition to the St. Johanns-Tor and the St. Alban-Tor , the Spalentor was also spared. The gate has been free since the city fortifications were demolished.

Surname

The origin of the name «Spalen» has not been clarified beyond any doubt. In 1231, the word "Spalon" is recorded for the first time in the region, probably derived from the Latin palus , which means something like stake or palisade . From around 1220 the settlement area began to expand in front of the former city wall, which was later called the "inner city wall". The resulting “suburb” was not left defenseless, but secured by a wooden palisade. This presumably gave rise to the name of the then suburb and today's “Spalen” district.

The thesis is supported by examples from the region. In 1383 a "Spalacker" was mentioned near Wentzweiler, in 1339 a "Spalengarten" near Zumersheim and a "Hofstatt an dem Spalen" near Blotzheim. All of these examples indicate areas that were enclosed with a hag made of stakes.

Gate and equipment

The walls of the Spalentor are two meters thick on the outskirts and 1.60 meters on the inside. The gate has two portcullis in the passage, which is now only accessible to pedestrians. Two round, 28.15 m high towers flank the 40.3 m high Spalentor, and the two round towers each had pyramid-shaped tent roofs until a storm in 1842. The pointed roof of the gate itself is covered with colorful tiles and the interaction of the square gate tower with the attached round towers, which stand like two guards next to the passage, make this gate so special. The gate was supplemented in 1473/74 by a low front gate built by Jakob Sarbach and originally had a drawbridge over the city moat.

The Spalentor is decorated with a lot of sculptural decorations on the facade. Directly above the archway you can see a Basel coat of arms carved from red sandstone and framed by two lions . The dials of the watches come from the previous construction (see introduction).

The Spalentor was restored in 1933 by the Canton of Basel-Stadt with federal aid and placed under monument protection.

  • The Spalentor seen from the Spalenvorstadt

  • Detail of the sculptures on the front

literature

  • CH Baer: Art monuments of the Canton of Basel Stadt. Volume 1, Birkhäuser Verlag, 1932/71, pp. 244-284.
  • Hans Eppens: Building Culture in Old Basel. Frobenius Verlag, Basel 1974, pp. 46–47.
  • Peter Habicht , Christoph Matt: The Spalentor and the suburb. The story of a Basel landmark. Christoph Merian Verlag, Basel 2015, ISBN 978-3-85616-656-4 .
  • Annie Hagenbach: Basel in the image of its painters. Verlag B.Wepf, Basel 1939. (Article 43 with city-side view of the gate.)
  • Guido Helmig, Christoph Ph. Matt in: Annual report 1989 of the archaeological soil research BS, catalog of the landside outer city fortifications of Grossbasel. ISBN 3-905098-10-5 , pp. 93–96 with a comparative map, p. 83.
  • Guido Helmig: Annual report 1985 of the Archaeological Soil Research BS. In: Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde , pp. 182–187.
  • Rudolf Kaufmann: Basel the old cityscape. Birkhäuser Verlag, 1936. (Articles 13 to 15 with photos of the gate with porches (Article 13) and without porches, but with a city wall (Article 14) and with a house directly attached (Article 15).)
  • Eugen A. Meier : Basel then and now. 3. Edition. Buchverlag Basler Zeitung, 1995, ISBN 3-85815-266-3 , pp. 184-185. (With and a field-side illustration.)
  • Emil Major: Buildings and pictures from Basel's cultural history. Verlag Peter Heman, Basel 1986, pp. 59, 62-63.
  • Claudio Miozzari: Brünzeln in the Spalentor. The Basel architectural monument will be extensively renovated in 2012. In: Basler Stadtbuch 2011 , pp. 119–121.
  • CA Müller: The city fortifications of Basel. 1956, pp. 39-41.
  • Carl Roth: The Spalentor. In: Basler Jahrbuch 1936 , pp. 1–30.

Web links

Commons : Spalentor  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ www.altbasel.ch


Coordinates: 47 ° 33 ′ 29 "  N , 7 ° 34 ′ 53"  E ; CH1903:  610745  /  267,492