Mestské opevnenie mesta Sabinov

Sabinov is first mentioned in the charter of the Hungarian of King Bela IV of 23 February 1248. Its favourable location on the trade route leading through the Torysa valley was undoubtedly a determining factor that attracted German colonists here. The growing economic and political importance of Sabinov on the borders of the kingdom, as well as the efforts of the king Sigismund of Luxembourg to win allies in the cities, earned Sabinov the promotion to free royal city. This was done by a charter of 17 May 1405, which states that the town was to be surrounded by walls and other fortifications. According to the medieval chronicle of the town of Sabinov, the walls began to be built and surrounded by ditches only in 1474. Sabinov also helped the ruler in the fight against disobedient nobles, and therefore Matthias Corvinus granted him 100 zlotys for four years in 1485. for a period of 100 hundred years per year, intended for completion of the walls. The king himself was interested in the city being well fortified, and therefore in previous years he had already financially subsidised the city for this purpose. In 1481, he remitted all taxes to Sabinov for a period of four years and these funds were to be used for the construction of the walls. During the reign of Matthias Corvinus, Sabinov's economic and legal position was strengthened to such an extent that the other eastern Slovak royal towns accepted it as a member of the community of towns. Pentapolitans.
In 1603, when an in-depth inspection of private and public buildings, walls and fortresses was carried out in the Hungarian free royal towns, the thirty members of the Spiš Chamber also inspected Sabinov. The fortifications then had a total length of approximately 1330 m and was divided by 16 towers, two of which are gated.

Despite frequent repairs and careful maintenance, the fortification system of Sabinov had no greater military significance in the 17th-18th centuries and provided the townspeople only protection against smaller military units and brigands. In the first half of the 19th century the fortifications were no longer maintained, the moats were turned into gardens and the walls gradually decayed. The towers, which were owned by the town, were rented out to the inhabitants for economic and residential purposes.
City fortifications in Sabinov in the past defined the area of the medieval royal town of irregular oval plan with axes 440 and 345 m, with a central square of lenticular plan. The town, situated in the valley of the Torysa, was once a long-distance route along the Torysa to Poland, which also determined the town's urban planning and the lens-shaped square. The road formed the basic central axis of the town and divided its area into two halves: north and south. The relatively simple conception of the fortification system, the character of the bastions and roofs were also predetermined by natural conditions.
Around the road, the original buildings were grouped together and in its centre a square was created, lined on the sides with townhouses with long, deeply oriented plots. City fortifications formed an external fortification element, using the flow of the Mlynský brook on the southern side. With the gradual development of the town, the fortification was swallowed up by newer buildings, so that although it still forms part of the historic core of the town, some parts of it are situated in the depths of the plots and urbanistically no longer participate in the spatial delimitation of the historic buildings.Due to the characteristic arrangement of the bastions with their relatively large spacing (50 - 77 m), adapted to the new advanced firearms, the fortification system of Sabinov is considered to be a part of the Gothic-Renaissance. The bastions themselves, divided by two to four storeys, retain their plan and height parameters. gothic character.

Of the entire urban fortification with a perimeter around 1395 m only fragments with a total length of about 497 m. The whole fortification circuit was divided into curtins (a wall between two flanking towers, bastions, or bastions), on the border of which stood sixteen towers in 1603, two of the towers contained city gates and were fortified with foregates. All the towers, by their bulk, projected in front of the line of the rampart and had a flanking function - ( flanking covers the so-called dead space, i.e. that which the defenders of the rampart, if they could not lean out, would not be able to hit.) The gradual loss of the defensive significance of the fortifications in the 18th century caused the ground floors of the towers to be used for residential purposes. At the same time, the foreland in the place of the filled-in ditches was being parcelled out and built over with farm buildings. As a result of the widening of the road leading through the square, the gate towers and their adjacent sections of the neighbouring courtyards were demolished before 1869, and gradually individual sections of the wall were dismantled for building material.
The best and most complete preserved is the southern line with the remains of the castle wall together with five towers and small torsos of four other towers. This part of the fortification is flanked along its entire length on the inner side by a continuous fortified lane, with a row of plots with houses adjacent to the wall on the outer side.
The entire fortification of Sabinov had a unified concept consisting of a circular fortification wall fortified with regularly spaced towers and its layout was very close to the fortification the nearby Šariš Castle, which is also regularly divided by preceding late Gothic towers with a dominant semicircular plan. Their access had a defensive strategy almost identical to the fortification of Sabinov.

Preserved parts of the fortification:
Tower No. 1 with a hexagonal polygonal plan and the original three storeys has been preserved up to the level of the crown of the present 4th storey. Originally the tower was only accessible through an entrance opening. A number of the primary beam lintels and parapet stops survive.
Tower No. 2 preserved to its original height of five storeys. Originally it was accessible only by an entrance at the 4th floor level connected to the adjacent furnace corridor. All the floors were separated from each other by beamed ceilings, after which the round beds of the ceiling beams have been preserved.
Kurtina (the wall between the two flanking towers, bastions or bastions) between towers 2 and 3 reaches a total length of about 61.5 m and has a straight course. Only a minimum of its original construction survives above ground level, up to a height of 1 m.
Tower No. 3 - of a semicircular plan reaches today the height of four original floors. Originally it was accessible only through the entrance on the 3rd floor level, directly from the continuous corridor of the neighbouring courtyards.
Curtain between towers 3 and 4 reaches a length of 64 m and has a straight course. It has been preserved almost continuously to a height of about two metres.
Tower No. 4 - semicircular plan has been preserved to the height of the original three storeys. It was accessible at the level of the original 2nd floor by an entrance in the north-eastern wall connected directly to the adjacent curtain wall. The original lower floors still retain their slit roofs with beam lintels and parapet stops.
Curtain between towers 4 and 5 reached a length of about 56.5 m and had a straight course. The best preserved eastern part, 14 m long and 6.5 m high, has a remnant of the original slit shot in the forepart.
Tower No. 5 - retained only the north-eastern wall, 7 m wide and up to two storeys above ground level.
Curtain between towers 6 and 7 reached a length of about 58 m (Fig. 1). Its original construction has been preserved almost in its entire course up to about the height of the ochodze.
Tower No. 7 together with tower No. 10 belonged to the largest towers of the wall system. Only the eastern part of the rounded shell and a small part of the northern straight wall have been preserved above the ground. According to the description of 1603, the tower had four storeys and there was another damaged tower with a lifting gate nearby.
Curtain between towers 7 and 8 about 79 m long has been preserved almost in its entirety
Wall continuing from tower No. 10 to the north-west, only a short restored section in the connection to tower No. 10 has been preserved above ground level, for a total length of about 3 m. The wall now has a reconstructed original ochodza with one key shot.