1999 Photographs from Malbork | Poland Site Index | Home
I
woke in the morning and purchased the earliest ticket available
to enter the grounds of the castle. I may have been the first
visitor of the day to cross through the gate. As I entered and
explored the initial spaces of the building, I could only think
of how difficult it would have been to successfully complete
an assault this place. The walls are massive, thick and tall.
If the bridge is pulled away, there is no way to access the main
door. Arrows, stones and oil could be dropped on me from almost
anyplace. If I fell into a moat, whether it was dry or filled
with water, there would be no place to go for help or exit. Life
or death would be at the whim of those on the walls above.
Walking
through the grounds, the buildings have a militaristic simplicity
and beauty. The masses are simple and direct forms of brick masonry
topped by steeply pitched tile roofs. Patterns in the bond pattern
of the brick vary from building to building and the slate roofs
contain accents in shades of green and red. Sometimes these slates
have a distinct pattern or arrangement, sometimes they are random.
Most of the doors are constructed of large planks of hardwood
and several of the key exterior defensive doors are clad in iron,
held in place by a dense array of iron studs. All of the hardware
is heavy iron. All the doors close with a distinctive medieval
"thud!"
Moving farther into the heart
of the castle, there is a central cloister and water well. The
well is covered by an sextagonal slate roof and capped with an
elegant sculpture of a pelican and its nest. At the arcade of
the cloister, tiny sculptures are carved into the brick at the
base of each arch depicting various individuals in the life of
the castle: children and adults, men and women, royalty, holy
men and commoners are all illustrated. It is a portrait of castle
life in individual sculptures no larger than a fingertip.
Several
of the primary interior spaces have also been restored and are
open to the public for viewing. These are the royal corridors,
gathering rooms and secondary spaces. Visitors can also examine
the furnace and integrated, below-floor air shafts that sent
heat through the building. Other accessible areas include grave
sites and an extensive medieval armor collection. As I said before,
this is an impressive site which underwent an extensive reconstruction
effort following the war and extending into the 1980s.
In the early afternoon, I headed off for the train station for the journey to Torun. When I arrived at the next hotel, I had my first email access in several days and Tomek Wolender had sent a message asking me to call him as soon as possible. As I discovered, he arranged a meeting for me with a professor at Torun University and a local architect. We were scheduled to meet the next morning. At around 8:00pm, I headed out to find some food and explore a few parts of the city during the night. I had dinner in a basement pizzeria, a cool student hang-out.
