History
In 1292, Prince Bolko carried out the foundation and connection of the knight settlement on the left bank of Oława, the so-called Old Town and the settlement at the church of St. Gothard, giving the voigt office of the newly formed Strzelin to a certain Siegfried. The hereditary voigt stood at the head of the town until the mid-fourteenth century, but already in 1316 a four-member council appeared next to him. The town bought the voigt office in 1349, receiving from the prince of Ziębice Nicholas the Small the right to independently choose councilors, while a judicial authority, a four-person court, was mentioned in Strzelin as early as in 1297.
The establishment of the municipal government required appropriate rooms, which is why the town hall building was erected in the first half of the 14th century. It was recorded in 1354, when Prince Nicholas allowed stalls to be placed near it, and also in 1362, when Duchess Agnes allowed another twelve trading stalls to be built on the market square. In 1520, its late medieval rebuilding began, completed six years later, but in 1548 the Gothic building was destroyed by fire. In the 1560s a Renaissance rebuilding took place, which incorporated a west commercial building into the town hall.
The early modern history of the town hall was marked by its extremely frequent damages. In 1619, another town fire damaged the town hall tower, which was rebuilt a year later. Despite this, in 1648 its upper part collapsed, which had to be rebuilt the following year. The town fire in 1706 partly destroyed the town hall and the tower, while the town hall tower itself was destroyed again during the storm in 1817. After another fire of the town from 1822, the town hall was rebuilt in neo-Gothic forms, at the same time demolishing, among others upper part of the Renaissance attic. Military operations in 1945 led to the total destruction of the building, only the quadrangular, oldest fragment of the tower’s base remained. In 2004–2005 research and conservation works were carried out, and a few years later the upper part of the tower was rebuilt.
Architecture
The town hall in Strzelin was located in the southern part of the almost square market measuring 115 x 115 meters, while the market square was marked out in the town center, close to a rectangle in plan. The division between two meridional and two parallel lines of streets coming out of the corners of the market drew attention to its almost perfect division, so you could get to the seat of the city authorities from any city gate. The extent of the town to the north and south was to correspond to three widths of the market square, with the central square on which the town hall was erected, was one of the largest in Silesia. According to the census of 1331, there were 55 “wealthy” houses next to it. The town hall was also adjacent in the mid-market block to the long merchants’ house (cloth hall), at which gingerbread makers stalls were at the corner, and herring stalls at the eastern wall. Parallel to the cloth hall stood temporary soap stalls, further west there were meat, bread, shoe stands and counters of the wealthiest traders. Probably a little further away from the town hall on the market square there were stands for trading in hay, fodder and lard.
The oldest stone building of the town hall block was probably a square tower, with external dimensions at the ground floor of 10.6 x 10.6 meters and walls up to 3.2 meters thick, built of unworked granite. Its lower floor served as a prison cell, and above it was a vaulted room heated by a fireplace, probably the guard’s room. This room was connected by internal stairs in the thickness of the wall with the upper, vaulted room, which was converted into a prison room in the Middle Ages. Above, the walls of the tower were octagonal.
The stone building of the town hall from the first half of the 14th century had an L-shaped plan, added to the tower from the south and east. The town hall cellars housed a beer tavern and a beer or wine warehouse. The vaulted ground floor housed the chancellery and the weigh office. On the first floor there was a chamber for councillors with a town clerk’s office, a town archive and a chamber for lay judges and a court clerk. Two rows of stalls were added to the west of the town hall tower, initially probably of half-timbered construction, in the late Middle Ages rebuilt into a brick, two-lane and six-part trade building, consisting of five stalls.
Current state
The tower’s quadrangular base has survived in its original condition to this day, while the upper part was reconstructed in the 21st century in the Renaissance style. In addition, the town hall building adjacent to the tower was rebuilt by 2023, also reconstructed in the Renaissance style. A stone judge’s table has been preserved at the tower, probably from the 15th century. Unfortunately, the monument is today surrounded by nightmarish housing developments built on the site of former tenement houses during communism.
bibliography:
Atlas historyczny miast polskich. Tom IV Śląsk, red. R.Czaja, M.Młynarska-Kaletynowa, D.Adamska, zeszyt 10 Strzelin, Wrocław 2017.
Karnicki R., Projekt odbudowy ratusza w Strzelinie, Wrocław-Strzelin 2018.