Download Igor Čulig KARLOVAC The Renaissance star

Igor Čulig
KARLOVAC
The Renaissance star-shaped city at a border and a crossroads
1606
The city of Karlovac was built on the edge of the Pannonian Plain in times when the border of the
Ottoman and Habsburg Empires was formed along the Rivers Kupa and Korana, southwestern
tributaries of the Danube basin. It is situated near their confluence and at the edge the Kupa's
waterway. Located about a hundred kilometers from the Adriatic coast, Karlovac became all the
more important as a significant thoroughfare, because some of the previous routes between the
coast and inland, often based on ancient routes, had been cut off.
Driven by the Ottoman threat, the political changes in the 16th century were profound and farreaching. In 1527, Croatia became part of the Habsburg Empire, and a defence system was built on
the remnants of its territory. From 1578, a part of the area around the River Kupa (Pokuplje) and the
area south of it, known as the Croatian Military Frontier, was administered by the War Council in
Graz, led by the Habsburg Archduke Karl II of Styria after whom Karlovac was named. Karlovac
was particularly important for the defence of the lower lands of Austria, which helped in providing
finance and manpower for building, and the new city-fortress was the command centre of a military
organisation. In addition to military troops, there were craftsmen and traders and military engineers,
together with Croatian nobility, all participating in the maintainance of a very dense network of
castles, fortresses and watchtowers that extended all the way to the Adriatic coast.
Karlovac remained a border town until 1699 when, after the Peace of Karlowitz, the border moved
from the River Korana to the River Una. It then became a military and administrative centre of the
newly liberated areas. The Military Frontier was gradually transformed into a military province
whose troops were involved in numereous European wars. The opening of trade routes between the
Danube and the Mediterranean was advantageous to local merchants and craftsmen, and Karlovac
became a free royal city in 1781. From the port of Karlovac, grain was transported in horse-drawn
wagons along what were, for the time, very modern the roads, to the sea ports of Rijeka, Bakar and
Senj. However, the continued maintenance and upgrading of the defence systems shows that
Karlovac was crucial in geo-strategic considerations long into the 19th century, and not only in the
context of the conflict with the Ottomans.
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1579
The oldest plan of Karlovac bears record to the date when construction, or more accurately
earthworks, began on a previously undeveloped area at the confluence of the Kupa and Korana
Rivers: 13th July 1579. On the time line of the development of Renaissance polygonal ground
plans, this date positions Karlovac as the first newly built town, with an unprecedented degree of
geometric regularity and symmetry. The six-pointed star has a bastion system derived from the
inner polygon, with a radius of 120 Viennese fathoms, and an orthogonal street grid. The bastions
are of the then new Italian type, with indrawn flanks. Unusually, there is no direct connection
between the central square and either the city gates or the bastions, nor was it usual the position two
city gates next to the flanks of the bastions. With the main square in the centre, larger city blocks
are so arranged as to form a cross. Such explicit use of symbols and signs in the layout is a
characteristic of the Mannerist period of the Renaissance, here on an urban scale, and on the very
border of what was then the Christian world, which popes and emperors commonly called
Antemurale Christianitati (the bulwark of Christianity).
The architect of Karlovac is unknown. The latest proposal for attribution (Zlatko Uzelac, 2013) is in
favour of Giovanni Sallustio Peruzzi, who was, from 1567 until his death in 1573, in the service of
the Habsburgs. Like his famous father, Baldassarre Peruzzi, Giovanni had previously worked for
the Pope in Rome, so it is likely that he was sent as an envoy. Furthermore, his father was a student
of Francesco di Giorgio Martini, a Sienese architect credited with the invention of the bastion, and a
crucial figure in the development of polygonal fortifications. As building supervisor Peruzzi was
succeeded by Giuseppe Vintana, while Martin Gambon was charged with the execution of the
works in Karlovac.
The idea of a star-shaped ideal city had existed for more than a century before the construction of
Karlovac, first in treatises on architecture, then in the regulation and remodeling of existing cities.
Karlovac was not recognized in this discourse at the time of its foundation, and is still little
recognised today. Except in its ground-plan, the city-fortress in Pokuplje has long lacked any other
representative features of style. Nor was its initial construction customary for the Italian
architectural tradition, partly because of lack of funds, partly because of its rapid pace. The bastions
and curtain walls were made of earth and not of stone, about which builder Martin Gambon was to
complain. Although it was well-known that earth, as a soft material, resisted artillery attacks very
well, as was confirmed especially by the Dutch tradition of building, the Karlovac bastions initially
had a typically Italian form that was difficult to execute with an erosive material, and which
therefore was later changed.
The plan from 1646 shows that the
flanks of the bastions are straight,
no longer indrawn, which mitigates
erosion. Other changes prioritise
defence functions over stylistic
representation. There is a covered
way along the outer side of the
moat, with places of arms in front
of the curtain walls. With the
addition of the glacis, the entire
defensive front became twice as
wide. The street grid was expanded
and complemented towards the
periphery, which makes the inner
cross less readable.
1646
More than the remaining structures, the documentation drawn up by the military engineers testifies
to various additions to the bastion system, as well as to never executed proposals and abandoned
projects. The increasing range of artillery required the application of new fortificational elements
and the expansion of the defence zone, even on the opposite banks of the rivers. Moreover, with the
approval of the court military council headed by Eugene of Savoy, there began in 1733 the
construction of a new fortress, Orlica, by the left bank of the River Kupa, near its confluence with
the River Korana, the location being pinpointed four years previously on the recommendation (and
possibly according to the design) of the famous military architect, Nicolaus de Doxat Demoreta.
The project was soon abandoned due to a lack of funds and new strategic priorities. The defence
was not based on the bastion system but on the Tenaillensystem (a saw of triangular teeth). By all
accounts, for the second time in history, this part of the Kupa basin was to be the site of an early
application of what was then an innovative building solution. Larger in size than the Karlovac star
or any other fortress ever built on Croatian territory, Orlica was to be brick-built, thereby stimlating
brick production in Karlovac.
Karlovac and Orlica
18th century
Attention was then focused again on the Karlovac star. On several ocassions the front was expanded
by the use of fleche (arrow like additions) protruding from the tips of the glacis. In the moat, in
front of the curtain wall which contained the so-called 'Turkish gates', there was built a ravelin, the
remnants of which still exist today. A suburb by the River Kupa was fortified, which also regulated
the supply of water from the Kupa into the moat and the drainage thereof in the opposite direction.
Finally, several bastions and curtains were walled in stone, but only in the foot.
1783
after
1800
1899
Frequent floods have affected not only the erosion of the bastion system but also the shaping of an
urban fabric that was often exposed to water. Behind the city gates overlooking the River Kupa (the
Viceroy's gate) there was a square that has been extended, that is, curved towards the throat of the
bastion, and the area behind the curtains was occupied by rows of houses. Most were wooden
houses with narrow sides facing the street, mutually spaced out so that there were narrow passages
into the interior of blocks. There were a few mansions and military buildings built in stone, while
brick-built powder magazines were located on the bastions. Concerning the use of a symbolic
layout and its positioning in the urban network, the most interesting accomplishment was the
chapel, raised in 1680 by the Karlovac general and Maltese knight Joseph Hreberstein. This central
building with a dome was located on the surface of the square mentioned above (today Strossmayer
Square), in the corner of a peripheral block that formed the cross in the urban network. If there was
already an irregularity in the urban grid, it was probably still considered to be only a temporary
situation. Besides, the very layout of the chapel had a symbolic meaning: it features a Maltese
cross, as a memory of the "knight on the bulwark of Christianity". Today, only the foundations
remain of the chapel where Heberstein was buried, situated opposite the mansion in which he lived.
However, in the late 1730s the city finally acquired its new baroque appearance, naturally still
robust and military in character. In the second half of the 18th century, the main square was built as
a typical Paradenpaltz (Piaza D'Armi), with large barracks and an arsenal occupying whole city
blocks. On the main square, the Franciscan monastery and the church were expanded and equipped,
and in the spirit of the religious tolerance which marked the reign of Joseph II, an Orthodox church
was built. Concurrently, the citizens of Karlovac erected more representative houses and mansions,
and the first city hall was also erected.
But it was only in the 19th century that a new commercial and civic class managed to create its
own city panorama with new housing and public buildings, in the inner city and its surrounding
suburbs, rendering the bastion system undesirable. After the abolition of the military border in
1881, fortification structures were removed, and a green, horticultural ring created, in which the
star-shape could still be discerned, mostly due to the remnants of moats, in other words the park
areas below street level. After the First World War and consequent political changes, building
practice became all the more invasive, partially occupying the space of the former curtains and
bastions, mainly on the side of the River Kupa. The fact that many of the historic military buildings
were used by the Yugoslav armies prevented the rebuilding of approximately half of the bastion
front facing the River Korana. The 400th anniversary of Karlovac can be considered a milestone,
because for that occasion the Zagreb Institute of Art History carried out an analytical study in which
the historic core of Karlovac was deignated as cultural heritage, even though this did not mange to
solve problems related to the remains of the bastion system, and generally had too little influence on
contemporary urban and architectural practice.