Feldioara Fortress, Transilvania

Feldioara Fortress - details and images

Feldioara fortress city today - was on the left bank of the Olt River, 17 km north-west of Brasov. The name of the town today is of Hungarian descent, Fold-Var `` meaning `` Fortress of land, but he was not always this way though. German version is Marienburg and means `` `` Cities. Mary was the patron of the Teutonic Knights and the city of Feldioara is one that can be attributed to their fortifications.

Wear City after leaving their name Castrum Sanctae Mariae (1240) and is situated on the hill Feldioara, surrounded on three sides by the river Homorod. Teutonic experience manufacturers of the Holy Land and Asia Minor in the land of Transylvania has construction techniques and solutions found in great crusader castles of Tyr, Krak des Chevaliers and Ashkelon.

The old fortress of the Teutonic is still preserved today only a remnant of a stone wall in the north-west, which proved to be totally different in terms of the art of building fortifications Feldioara rest. Its base is made of large stone boulders which were placed above the other boulders tied with a high quality mortar.

It seems that the city was surrounded by a second chamber, much larger, in which there were a chapel, an infirmary and a `` `` House Convent, who played the refectory (ground), storage and dining room (first floor) and bedroom (top floor). Both the chapel and other buildings were likely destroyed by the Tatars in 1241. On their ruins, which cistercienii the hands of King Bela IV had left town built the present church. Romanesque chapel of the Teutonic Knights became perhaps the Gothic choir, and the ruins are the foundations of `` body `` House Convent basilica.

However, the fortification that can be seen today on the hill no longer retains traces of this Teutonic. Towers and the walls by which they were linked from the beginning were probably built after leaving the remaining Saxon community, but we can not state the exact period. In Transylvania, after the great Tatar invasion began an explosion of fortifications.

City of Feldioara last and she was consumed by fire and sword, which drove the locals to rebuild with an oval enclosure, which form the plateau, the south entrance and towers of which are preserved today only the western tower, whose levels were once separated by the platform and communicated through the wooden stairs.

It is assumed that there were the same platforms and in another tower, the east, now demolished to the basement, which had a semi-cylindrical vault.

The last of them, the south, there are still some remnants of the wall only at the base. Curtin is 6-7 meters height in the middle can be seen yet fixed the holes in that bracket who supported beams watch the road. On the southern side masiculii are still there and in the west of the yard was once a 70 meter deep well.

Looks like another rebuilding the city occurred after 1420, because a document from 1439 says that the inhabitants of a fortified castrum Feldioara already have to defend their property and themselves. So it is that the city was in the time of King Sigismund of Luxembourg a peasant and received from him the right city.

It was destroyed by the Turks in 1430 and his campaign Vlad Tepes in 1457, but residents rebuilt it in the same year. In 1529, after the battle of Feldioara, Nicoara magistrate great, captain of the armies of Petru Rares, the Saxons fiercely punished, which supports the Emperor Ferdinand I, and probably also when the enclosure wall was destroyed in the south. It can also be assumed and that the northern tower was built in 1657, because the workers have scratched this year in the plaster wall.

With almost half a century before, in 1612, Prince Gabriel Bathory Brasov defeats in battle and his troops killed 39 young. Between 1912-1913 was a monument erected in their honor at the edge of town.

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