Nieznany mur obronny partii przedlokacyjnego Kazimierza

Abstract

A PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN DEFENSIVE WALL SURROUNDING A PORTION OF KAZIMIERZ PRIOR TO ITS ESTABLISHMENT UNDER MAGDEBURG LAW

In the course of archaeological and architectural research conducted in the years 2019–2021 in connection with a road surface replacement project on Krakowska Street in Kraków at the intersection of this street with Rabina Meiselsa Street, during the uncovering of a section of Kazimierz’s defensive wall researchers came across an older wall running perpendicularly to it. The uncovered section of the wall, built from layered broken limestone, runs parallel to the frontage of Krakowska Street, underlying two thirds of the street’s width. The thickness of the wall is ca. 1.5 ell which provides indirect information about its height. The oping of the wall, uncovered on an almost sixty-metre-long stretch of the structure, continues further towards the south and the north-east, bending eastward in the north section, probably running parallel to the Old Vistula River channel. Stratigraphic relationships of the layered wall uncovered in the street and running perpendicularly to Kazimierz’s defensive wall clearly prove the dissimultaneity of these two walls’ construction. Kazimierz’s defensive wall stands at right angles to the wall discovered underneath what is today known as Krakowska Street, and the wall built higher in the structure runs across (and on top of) the other wall’s older coping, besides, the two walls dinner in terms of choice of building material, its specific usage and construction technology. Therefore, the thesis has been proposed that the presently uncovered relics of the wall underneath Krakowska Street are in fact the surviving bottom part of the wall that used to encircle the town of Kazimierz from the west prior to its establishment under Magdeburg Law. The said wall is most likely the investment effect of the settlement unit that had originally existed in the discussed area and was later transformed following the parcelling out of land during the formal establishment of the town under Magdeburg Law in 1335. From the west, the discussed wall was built along the line of a section of an old trade route, the so-called salt way running through Wieliczka and Bochnia to Hungary. This section, later referred to as Krakowska Street, became the central axis of the town of Kazimierz at the time of its formal establishment under Magdeburg Law, and was used as a reference point during the marking out of the market square and the street grid, and the measuring up of the blocks of future building developments. The establishment of a settlement unit encompassed by a wall and located in the immediate vicinity of a trade route without incorporating a section of the route within the walls may tell a story of a well-thought-out and organized investment activity, unlike the processes we observe in natural, gradually evolving oval plans elsewhere. Issues such as the exact shape and location of the wall in its entirety, as well as the presence of a settlement unit in this area prior to the formal establishment of Kazimierz under Magdeburg Law in 1335 can be addressed by further archaeological research in the future. The previously unknown, and recently discovered defensive wall dating back to the time before the town’s formal establishment under Magdeburg Law is an interesting testimony to the original plans and opportunities associated with the process of Kazimierz’s development. The latest finds verify what we have known so far about certain elements of the reconstructed situation and the shape of mediaeval Kazimierz in this particular area, for it had been established that the earlier settlements operating on the river island surrounded by the channels of the Vistula concentrated around the Church of SS Michael and Stanislaus at Skałka and St James the Apostle’s Church, as well as St Lawrence’s Church in the village of Bawół. There are no mentions about developments existing prior to the establishment of Kazimierz under Magdeburg Law in the discussed location in specialist literature on the subject.