Sławkowska Gate in Olkusz

Address:

Olkusz

GPS:

50° 16' 42.7656" N 19° 33' 24.3396" E

In the 14^th century Olkusz was surrounded by walls as evidenced by the oldest preserved town seal appearing on a document of 13 August 1386, in which the town councilors paid homage of faithfulness to Władysław Jagiełło. The town seal represents the coat of arms with the image of an open gate built of stone blocks, with battlemented towers on its sides. The written record confirming that Olkusz had town walls dates from 1366. The builder (or actually the funder of the walls as the money for their building came from the royal treasury) was Casimir the Great (Kazimierz Wielki). However, there is a hypothesis that the beginning of the work should be dated to the times of Wenceslas of Bohemia (Wacław Czeski). The total length of the Olkusz wall was about 1100 metres (320 metres long and 225 metres wide) and it surrounded 7 hectares of the town. After the Augustinian monastery and St Mary’s church were built by Jagiełło, the town wall was moved in the east. The fortifications were built of Parczewski conglomerate – the characteristic red stone, which was easy to process, but occurred in only one place in Poland in the quarry in the Parcze vilage. Only the face of the wall was built with conglomerate and the center was filled with limestone. The thickness of both walls and towers was about 2 meters. The original fortifications had about 15 towers and 2 or even 3 gates. The existence of the two has been confirmed: recently excavated the Sławkowska Gate and the Kraków Gate in the east. Perhaps there was also the Wolbrom Gate (also called Księska or Miechowska). The walls were demolished at the beginning of the 19^th century. We know what they looked like only from drawings.

source: District Office in Olkusz