městské opevnění Mělníka Fortifications

The Mělník city fortifications are a largely vanished system of medieval walls and gates. Their remains document medieval defensive architecture and are also part of the foundation of the historical appearance of the city.

The fortifications consisted of a main outer wall, a barbican wall, and a moat. It ran along the perimeter of the fortifications of the original early medieval stronghold. The vast majority of the walls were demolished in the nineteenth century. Fragmentarily preserved is approximately four hundred meters of outer walls along Erbenova and Ostruhová street north of Náměstí Míru. From the outside it is surrounded by a park; from the inside the wall encloses plots of houses, the town hall, and the former Capuchin monastery. A small part of the walls also remained south of the castle along Jaroslava Seiferta street.

The main wall was, according to its preserved part, approximately two meters thick wall made of stone. It is best preserved behind house number fifty-five on Erbenova street, where a battlement projection and remnants of the parapet are visible. Other fragments of the wall were adapted and became the exterior walls of houses. No defensive tower has survived.

The most distinctive reminder of the barbican wall is a five-sided bastion with rectangular loopholes on the northeastern side of the city, preserved only at ground level. A wall south of kostel svatého Petra a Pavla near the house called Stará škola probably also belonged to the barbican wall. It served as a chapter house, school for clergymen, a book copying workshop, and a municipal school. The outer wall of mixed masonry, approximately seventy centimeters thick, and also the moat survived only on the northeastern side. The moat is today a grassy park.

Two gates led into the city, the Labská gate and the Pražská gate. The Labská gate, first mentioned in the second half of the fourteenth century, disappeared in the nineteenth century. The Pražská gate is the oldest surviving part of the fortifications. It probably dates from the end of the thirteenth century, when the new fortification system was being built. It is a Gothic gateway tower on 5. května street east of Náměstí Míru.

The gate underwent several reconstructions. During the Renaissance remodeling in fifteen thirty-six they raised it by one and a half stories. Today's five stories, however, were created only after a fire in sixteen fifty-two. Another repair followed after a fire in seventeen ninety-nine. The tower also served as a prison. In eighteen thirty-six it was sold and a water tank was built inside it, into which water was pumped from the Pšovka stream and from there distributed to the city fountains. Between nineteen sixteen and nineteen twenty the tower was restored according to plans by architect Kamil Hilbert. Since the nineteen sixties it has housed a tea room and gallery.