Piast Tower
The Piast Tower, dating from the second half of the 14th century, was the most important element of the castle’s defensive system during the Piasts’ reign. It is a rectangular stone structure, almost 30 metres high, which consists of four main parts. The underground part extending around 6 metres below the present level of the ground used to serve as a dungeon. The second, lower part of the Piast Tower is 10 metres high and of 9 metres side and served as stores. The middle part, 15 metres high and of a smaller side (8.5 m), was probably used as living quarters. The 4-metre-high upper part of the Piast Tower is the most complex and served military purposes. It is a battlemented brick gallery projecting beyond the walls, supported on stone corbels and provided with machicolations i.e. openings in the gallery floor for dropping missiles or boiling liquids on attackers. The tower used to have a steeply pitched roof. Inside the tower there are seven floors connected by stone stairs in the lower parts and wooden ones higher up. The width of the walls is 2.5 metres at the bottom and 1.5 metres nearer the top. Narrow windows provided light. Four Piast coats of arms decorated the quoins of the tower’s upper part.
After climbing 120 stone and wooden stairs we finally reach the roof terrace which has been built at the top of the Piast Tower. It offers panoramic views of both Cieszyn and Český Těąín, as well as views of the surrounding country. From the top you can see some of the buildings which were once linked to the Piasts and bear witness to that period. You really ought to visit them. Some distance away in Brandys, now a district of Český Těąín, a few centuries ago there used to be a summer residence of the Cieszyn Piasts, surrounded by orchards and pastures. In 1617 Prince Adam Wenceslas met his end there. His daughter, Princess Elizabeth Lucretia, also visited this place quite often and would invite Cieszyn Valachs, shepherds from the nearby Beskid Mountains. Taxes paid on their sheep constituted a considerable source of income for the last Cieszyn Princess. The residence is long gone, but its appearance is known from iconographical sources. On the Polish side we can see the parish church of St. George the origins of which go back to the Middle Ages since it was founded as a chapel by the town hospital. The hospital, actually a poorhouse for poor, sick and aged inhabitants of Cieszyn, although a municipal institution, was also supported by the Cieszyn Princes. For example after the dissolution of the Franciscan monastery Prince Adam Wenceslas donated the land and the buildings of the monastery to the town in 1545 in order to support the hospital. A keystone depicting the Piast eagle in the presbytery of St. George’s church evokes the Piast times. The Franciscan monastery founded in 1476by Prince Premislaus II was located a bit further away, in what is now ul. Michejdy, where in the 19th century stood the town’s shooting range (today at 20 ul. Michejdy). Further on there is the chuch of the Holy Trinity made conspicuous by its tall turquoise painted tower. It was built in 1594on the site of a wooden cemetery chapel erected by the cemetery for victims of the plague in 1585. The property intended for the cemetery was donated to the town by Princess Catherine Sidonia. In 1609 after the restoration of Catholicism as the dominant religion in the Cieszyn Duchy the Cieszyn Princes left the chapel by the cemetery for the use of Lutherans until 1654. The church has retained some Late Gothic and Renaissance features. The tower added in 1864 still houses an original bell dating back to 1641 which bears a coat of arms and an inscription in honour of the last Cieszyn Princess Elizabeth Lucretia.
Descending from the Castle Hill we head straight for ul. Głęboka, Cieszyn’s main street. As we begin to climb the first turning to the left is ul. Mennicza which will lead us after a few steps to the Theatre Square. The neo-Baroque Adam Mickiewicz Theatre was built there in 1910 as the German Theatre. But previously the site was occupied by Austrian barracks, and even earlier – by the Cieszyn’s first parish church.
Editing and selection of illustrations: Renata Karpińska Photographs: Renata Karpińska, Paweł Halama, Anna Fedrizzi, Joanna Rzepka, Tomasz Matysiak, Henryk Tesarczyk, Dominik Dubiel Photograph of the heller of Premislaus I: Wojciech Woźniak
Translation from Polish: Irena and David French