Jelenia Góra Town Trail · the short route

Ramparts

Jelenia Góra was girdled by a double wall – not a figure of speech, but two separate rings with a dry moat between and in front of them. They came down in the nineteenth century, yet the town still has their shape: where they stood, streets and promenades run today. This stop is about what disappeared, and where to look for it.

How it was built

First came earth-and-timber ramparts, and probably only on three sides. On the north they were not raised at all: the defence was the steep slope falling towards the Bóbr.

At the end of the fourteenth century a stone wall replaced them. It stood up to eight metres high and about a metre and a half thick. It became double only at the end of the fifteenth century, when a second, outer ring was added – much lower, barely over two metres, but with nine bastions pushed out in front of its line. Between the two walls ran a strip five and a half to seven and a half metres wide.

In front of all that lay a dry moat, thirteen to sixteen metres across – and by the Wojanowska Gate, on the eastern side, it widened to nineteen and a half. Why there in particular is explained on the spot, at the seventh stop.

Three gates and dozens of towers

There were three ways in: the Wojanowska Gate from the east, the Castle Gate from the west and the Long Street Gate from the south. Each had a tower – beside the passage, not above it.

The towers numbered several dozen. The Historical Atlas counts thirty-six, noting that the figure changed over the centuries; other studies give twenty-odd. They stood close together – every twenty or thirty metres – and rose about three metres above the crown of the wall.

In the early sixteenth century the chronicler Bartholomew Stenus wrote the line about Jelenia Góra that every guidebook still repeats: “the town is small, but splendidly girdled”.

The wall as a business

Here begins the part the guidebooks leave out. For most of its life the fortification was not an army but a property – and the town made use of it.

The strip between the walls served the magistrate for shooting contests, while part of it was leased out as gardens and meadows. In the eighteenth century the moat was pasture for the town’s cattle. By the middle of the nineteenth century the whole strip had been leased and turned into the burghers’ kitchen gardens.

There was even a menagerie, set up on the steep bank by senator Hübner. It lasted only until 1745, but left behind trees and shrubs, and a place people walked to.

In other words: the people of Jelenia Góra kept cows in the moat and grew cabbage under the wall, long before the wall began to get in anybody’s way.

Why they disappeared

Not because of war. Because of traffic and space.

In the second half of the eighteenth century the gates proved too narrow and were widened one by one: the Wojanowska in 1755, the Long Street Gate in 1773, the Castle Gate in 1787. The moat began to be filled in, and the ground gained was built on and planted.

Then the gates themselves went. In 1833 the vault of the Castle Gate was demolished, in 1837 the Long Street Gate was pulled down. Final permission to demolish the walls came in 1862 – with a proviso that turned out to matter: the towers of the Wojanowska and Castle Gates were to remain.

Where the moats and ramparts had been, promenades were laid out. And that is the answer to the question of where the walls are today: under the streets that went round them. Aleja Bankowa and plac kardynała Wyszyńskiego follow their outline.

Where to look for them today

Four places:

1. The Castle Gate Tower on ul. Jasna – you can climb it. 2. The Grodzka Tower at ul. Grodzka 16 – now a guesthouse. 3. The Wojanowska Tower and Gate with St Anne’s Chapel on ul. Konopnickiej – the largest surviving group. 4. Fragments of wall absorbed into houses on ul. Jelenia – here you have to look carefully, because the wall does not stand on its own; it is somebody’s house wall.

By the Castle Gate there also survives the southern wall of the barbican with a Gothic stone corbel.

What else is nearby

Board number 2 stands where ul. Podwale meets ul. Jelenia – exactly along the northern line of the fortifications, above the escarpment. From here it is a short walk to Wzgórze Krzywoustego, from which you can see how the town sits on high ground above the Bóbr – and why, on the northern side, the edge of the slope was enough.

Frequently asked questions

Do the town walls of Jelenia Góra survive? Only in fragments. Three structures remain – the Castle Gate Tower, the Grodzka Tower, and the Wojanowska Tower and Gate with the bastion housing St Anne’s Chapel – along with stretches of wall absorbed into later buildings, mainly on ul. Jelenia. The whole group is listed under a single heritage register number: A/4953/614, by a decision of 28 August 1959.

When were the walls of Jelenia Góra built? The stone wall probably went up at the end of the fourteenth century, and the oldest surviving fragments date from the early fifteenth. The second, outer ring was added at the end of the fifteenth century – only then did the wall become double.

How many gates did the town have? Three: the Wojanowska from the east, the Castle Gate from the west and the Long Street Gate from the south.

Why were the walls demolished? Because they had lost their military value and were obstructing traffic and the growth of the town. The gates were already being widened in the eighteenth century, and permission to demolish the whole circuit came in 1862.

Was the moat filled with water? No, it was dry. In the eighteenth century the town’s cattle were pastured in it.

Where did the line of the walls run? Streets and promenades follow their outline – among them aleja Bankowa and plac kardynała Wyszyńskiego.