Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej (Jan 2015)
Heterogeniczność przestrzeni miast salinarnych Bochni i Wieliczki w dobie przedprzemysłowej
Abstract
THE HETEROGENEITY OF URBAN SPACE IN THE SALT-MINING TOWNS OF BOCHNIA AND WIELICZKA IN THE PRE-INDUSTRIAL ERA The layout and division of urban space in Bochnia and Wieliczka were greatly influenced by salt mining. Town-planning analyses indicate that at its foundation (1253) Bochnia had a strip layout with the main square at a right angle to the axis. Wieliczka, which received its charter in 1290, has a more regular layout, with a square market serving public functions; the edge parts were the space of the authority (the salt-mine castle) and the sacrum (the church and the cemetery). Bochnia was significantly transformed and received a new layout representing the models characteristic of Lesser Poland during the reign of Casimir the Great. The western part of the chartered town was cut off by new defence line from a suburb, in which the King founded a hospital for miners and a church (1357). An analogical foundation in Wieliczka (1363) was also situated in a suburb. The development of the salt mines in the late mediaeval and early modern period (from the 15th to the early 17th c.), stimulated the development of new suburbs and settlements in both towns. There are clear analogies between the layout of Oracka Street in Bochnia and the Mierżączka settlement in Wieliczka; the latter was granted its own municipal charter in 1628 as a private town in the estate of the Lubomirski family. It was probably due to this magnate family that a Jewish „town” developed at the border of Wieliczka, in Siercza. Its analogue in Bochnia (after its Jewish quarter was liquidated in the 15th c.) was the Jewish part of Nowy Wiśnicz. The expansion of sacred space at the expense of housing space started quite early in Bochnia, with the erection of a Dominican complex near the market square in 1375. In 1623 the miner hospital was replaced with an Observant friary. In the same year a Reformati friary was founded in a suburb of Wieliczka; also the Jesuits tried to get settled there. Vital changes in urban space were enforced by the Austrian Empire after the first partition of Poland, including the establishment of a new road network, changes in architecture connected with fire safety and a new structure of salt mine management, the liquidation of many religious houses and reallo-cating their plots to lay functions, and the settlement of the salt mine estates confiscated by the new government. An important element that delimited the borders of Wieliczka was the Austrian field fortress from 1778–1779.
