Jelenia Góra Town Trail · the short route

Tower, St. Anne's Chapel and Wojanowska Gate

Little is left of the walls of Jelenia Góra, but this is the place where you see most at once: a tower, a bastion with a chapel, and a gate. Each has its own story, and the gate’s is the strangest – for a hundred and thirty years it stood somewhere else. It was taken down in 1869 and carted off to the barracks. It came back in 1998.

Why Wojanowska

Because this was the way out eastwards, along the road to Wojanów – today the heart of the Valley of Palaces and Gardens. The Germans called it the *Schildauertor*. Beyond the gate began the Wojanowska suburb, and in 1546 the town bought a garden there and laid out a cemetery, because the one by the church was no longer enough.

It is worth knowing that this was the best-protected side of the town. The dry moat was thirteen to sixteen metres wide around the circuit, and precisely here 19.5 metres. Somebody decided trouble would come from the east.

The tower the wind blew down

On 4 December 1480 the tower collapsed in a gale and crushed five people. It was rebuilt quickly, and the walls you see are substantially from that rebuilding – but the silhouette is much younger. The tower was remodelled in 1590, and the Baroque cupola with a lantern was added only in 1759–1763. The element that catches the eye is therefore nearly three centuries younger than the tower itself.

This was, incidentally, the second time wind brought down a tower in this town and killed people: two hundred and fifty-nine years later the same happened to the tower of the town hall.

The dungeons of the tower held the town prison. The same arrangement as in the Castle Gate Tower: a defensive building stood idle most of the time, so a second use was found for it.

A chapel with arrowslits

Adjoining the tower is a bastion – a defensive work pushed out in front of the wall line. In 1514 it was thoroughly rebuilt and has since served two purposes at once: defence and worship. St Anne’s Chapel was made inside it, mentioned in the sources in 1516.

This is the most interesting interior on the route, for a simple reason: the same walls hold an altar and arrowslits. What survive are keyhole loopholes – narrow openings widened at the bottom, adapted for firearms. People prayed here in a building from which, if needed, they shot.

The chapel burned in 1634, in the town fire during the Thirty Years’ War. It was rebuilt in 1709–1715 to a design by Caspar Jentsch, and the furnishings date from then: a Baroque altar painting of St Anne, the Virgin and Child, accompanied by St Joachim and St Joseph.

In the eastern wall, between the windows, a stone keyhole loophole holds a plaque of 1948 marking the 840th anniversary of the town charter. A defensive monument was used here as a commemorative frame.

Beside it is set a damaged stone cross. In Lower Silesia such crosses are called penitential or reconciliation crosses – and the custom itself is documented: in the late Middle Ages a killer would found such a cross as one of his obligations under a settlement with the victim’s family, and such agreements survive. The point is that not every old stone cross is penitential; many were raised as votive, commemorative or boundary markers. For this particular one we have no document to settle the matter.

The gate that left town

The medieval, Gothic gate was demolished in 1755, and a year later a more modest Baroque gate with a wicket was put up in its place, serving only a toll and traffic function. That is the one standing here today, and it repays a look: it has Rococo cartouches with the arms of Jelenia Góra, Silesia and Prussia and a Latin inscription concealing a chronogram with the date 1763 – the year the Seven Years’ War ended and Silesia passed definitively to Prussia.

The outline of the demolished medieval gate is marked in the cobbles with darker setts – worth a glance at your feet.

In 1869 the gate was dismantled and taken out of town. Not because of disaster or war: the town was finishing the demolition of its fortifications and tidying the street mouth, and the gate stood in exactly the narrowest place.

Here we have to deal with the version you hear most often in Jelenia Góra – that it was about the trams. The dates do not allow it. The first tram ran in this town only on 10 April 1897, nearly thirty years after the gate was carted away. The tracks were indeed later laid along the same route, out to the barracks – which is probably where the association came from.

It ended up on the site of the barracks on today’s ul. Obrońców Pokoju, where the “Mechanik” technical school now operates. And here is the detail that changes the sense of the whole story: the gate did not become an ornament in a courtyard. It was built into the barracks complex – it went on being a gate, just somebody else’s.

It returned in 1998 – though more precisely, it was reconstructed. In 1997 the underground fragments were excavated and new piers were built, of masonry faced with sandstone, while the original heraldic cartouches were brought back from the barracks and set in place. The unveiling took place on 5 September 1998.

What follows from this

Three stops on this route tell three different ways of surviving. The Castle Gate Tower lasted because people took up a collection. The Grodzka Tower – because somebody moved in. And the Wojanowska Gate survived in the oddest way of all: because it was given another job. It was not thrown away but moved to somebody else’s entrance, where it did exactly what it had done before – for a hundred and thirty years, until the town remembered it.

Three times the same question – what to do with an old wall that is in the way – and three different answers, spread over two centuries.

What else is nearby

The complex stands where ul. Marii Konopnickiej meets ul. 1 Maja, at the eastern edge of the old town. Walking the other way along the line of the former walls brings you to the Grodzka Tower and then the Castle Gate Tower, and from there it is a short way to Wzgórze Krzywoustego.

Right by the gate stands the stag Witalis – some twenty-five metres away. A little further on, towards the Orthodox church, is Karruś.

Frequently asked questions

Why is it called the Wojanowska Gate? Because it led east, along the road to Wojanów – today part of the Valley of Palaces and Gardens. In German it was the Schildauertor.

Is it true the gate once stood somewhere else? Yes. In 1869 it was dismantled and taken to the barracks on today’s ul. Obrońców Pokoju, where the “Mechanik” technical school now stands. There it was built into the barracks buildings. It came back after a hundred and thirty years: it was reconstructed in 1997–1998 using the original heraldic cartouches.

Was the gate removed because of the trams? That is often said, but the dates contradict it. The gate went in 1869, and the first tram ran in Jelenia Góra on 10 April 1897. The reason was the demolition of the fortifications and the regulation of the street mouth.

How old is the tower? The walls come from the rebuilding after the disaster of 4 December 1480, when the tower collapsed in a gale and crushed five people. The silhouette is younger: remodelled in 1590, with the Baroque cupola and lantern from 1759–1763.

What is the chapel by the tower? St Anne’s Chapel, made inside a bastion – a defensive work pushed out in front of the wall. The bastion is fifteenth-century, rebuilt in 1514, and the chapel is first mentioned in 1516.

Why are there arrowslits in the chapel? Because it is still a defensive building. The chapel was fitted into an existing bastion and its loopholes were kept, so the altar and the shooting openings are in the same walls.

What is the cross in the wall? A damaged stone cross set into the eastern wall. In Lower Silesia such crosses are called penitential or reconciliation crosses – the custom of a killer founding one is attested in medieval settlement agreements. That does not mean every old stone cross was penitential, and for this one there is no document.

What else survives of the town walls? The Grodzka Tower, the Castle Gate Tower, the bastions – including this one with St Anne’s Chapel – and fragments of wall absorbed into later buildings, mainly on ul. Jelenia. The whole complex is listed under number A/4953/614, by a decision of 28 August 1959.