Outlying Tower
City of Kirchheimbolanden
The city charter that Count Henry II of Sponheim (reigned 1350-1393) received for his village Kirchheim from Emperor Charles IV in 1368 was significant in several ways: with the right to fortify, it offered protection and shelter for the population, and with market rights, the possibility of economic development.
What was missing, however, was a larger surrounding area, as Henry II’s county comprised only five villages around Kirchheimbolanden.
Accordingly, the inner-city market square [Location 39] only required a small area.
Medieval Kirchheimbolanden was thus an ‘agrarian town’. While fortification and market traffic certainly set the town apart from its surroundings, a large part of the local population also met their food needs through their own cultivation.
In contrast to Dannenfels, 7 kilometers away, where Henry’s father Philip had made an unsuccessful attempt at urban development in 1331, Kirchheimbolanden became a Sponheim ‘success story’.
The City Gate
The Lower Gate (Outlying Tower) formed the most important and therefore best protected access to the city. If, in turbulent times, the Upper Gate [Location 19] remained permanently closed, traffic to and from the city exclusively passed through the Lower Gate.
The gate tower has a square footprint of 6 x 6 m and had a (now slightly widened) passage 3 m wide. Four floors were built on top of the gate passage, with the uppermost offering a particularly good view of the city’s surroundings. It can also be assumed that at the level of this floor, there was a continuous round arch frieze on the outside, as is still preserved on other towers and wall sections.
The city was only accessible here via a drawbridge. In front of it, at a distance of about 30 m, was a small round tower for the guards at the barrier located there.
The southern city access was thus, in the medieval sense, a highly defensible complex and at the same time a representative expression of urban centrality.
In the Nassau-Weilburg period in the 18th century, the gate then only had a purely visual function, but was now even more emphasized in the cityscape through its Baroque transformation.
“Bolander Pforten”
The medieval designation of the ‘Outlying Tower’ as ‘Bolander Pforten’ (Bolander Gate) refers to Neubolanden Castle, located 3 km to the south, and the Lords of Bolanden residing there. Their feudal register (around 1190) also mentions beneficia (estates), partem frumenti et tocius iustricie (grain revenues and jurisdiction) in Kirchheim.
That Count Henry II of Sponheim (reigned 1350-1393) was then able to further expand the Bolanden legal basis enabled him to assume a sovereign role.
The “Bolander Pforten” was therefore more than just a directional indicator; the Bolanden Castle was also an imposing complex, one of the large ones, especially those built in the Palatinate during the Staufer period. A model is shown in the “Museum in the City Palace” [Location 28].
