Helvit Bastion - Prachatice, Czech Republic - Gothic Architecture on Waymarking.com

In the 14th century the Prachatice town obtained a monopoly on the salt trade with the city of Passau. Beside salt also other trading goods passed Prachatice because it was one of the main stops on the "Goldener Steg", the golden route between Bohemia and Bavaria. Especially the 16th century became, as a result of the trading ties, the Golden Era.

Lately the second renaissance belt of walls was adapted to of the time modern military strategy and was secured by shooting guns. Where the wall was bent there were rounded cannon towers - bastions. In a few floors they had one above another loopholes for big shooting gun so called "hakovnice". It was designed to be able to cover place not only in front of the bulwark, but also along the bulwark, if the enemy succeeded the get even there. We can see on the old drawings that bastions are were covered by high pointed roofs. Under the roof there was probably wooden protection (so called "podsebiti"). From that place (podsebiti) was possible to control by fire even the foot of the bastion itself. There are seven preserved bastions all around the city walls, but the best preserved is one called Helvít,

Date Built: 14th century

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This category is focused only to original Gothic architecture, not to pseudo-Gothic, neo-Gothic or Gothic Revival. You can not find this kind of architecture outside of "Old World", moreover this architecture appeared in ca XIIth century (early Gothic) and the last buildings are from cca XVIth (late Gothic) century...

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Date Logged Log User Rating   04/08/2023 hynous visited it 10/03/2021 slava04 visited it 08/18/2017 Demonici visited it

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