For Siena, the brick is the basis of the city's identity. The gentle tint of the local clay is called "burned Siena". In the XIII-XIV centuries, when the Siena Republic flourished, the production of building ceramics was under strict control. Uniform brick sizes were established (about 30 by 15 by 7.5 cm) and a marble standard was made, with which everyone could check in the hall of the city council.
The standard brick not only ensured high quality of construction, but also symbolized the high level of well-being of all citizens of the republic. The ensemble of the main square of Piazza del Campo, built on the site of the expanded ancient settlements, became eloquent evidence of this.
The square is shaped like a sink or a shallow amphitheatre descending to the gently curved facade of the Palazzo Publico, where the city government - the Council of Nine - met. The streets adjacent to the square divide its space into ten sectors of equal size, and this division is emphasized by the paving: nine, by the number of members of the council, the travertine strips divide the planes of the brick laid by the herringbone.
The palaces of the most noble families surrounding the square have equal height and do not argue with each other by the splendor of the decoration. Only the Palazzo Publico, whose lower tier is built of stone, and the Torre del Manjah Watchtower, which, on the contrary, has a brick wall with a stone finish, are distinguished.
The space, free and protected at the same time, invites you to spend more time in the square. Alas, the end of the ensemble coincided with the beginning of the decline of the republic: a year before the piazza was frozen, in 1348, the plague claimed the lives of two-thirds of the 50,000 inhabitants of Siena, after which the city lost its primacy in Tuscany to its rival, Florence.
When the castle looks like a picture in a book of fairy tales, it usually means one thing: it was thoroughly restored in the XIX century. This is also true in the case of Marienburg. Later, he got a lot of money to go to World War II, so he had to rebuild it again, and it was very convenient to have the documentation left by the first restorers. Nevertheless, the castle was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, and quite rightly so: it is the most grandiose example of brick gothic in the world.
The Romans started to actively use the baked brick, inventing a reliable binder. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the technology was mainly lost in Western Europe, but the brick continued to be used in Byzantium, from where it was adopted by the Arabs. In the Baltic region it was brought from the Holy Land crusaders of the Teutonic Order. Knights, already pushed out of Jerusalem and stopped by Alexander Nevsky on his way to the Russian lands, in the second half of the XIII century focused on the Christianization of the Prussian and Lithuanian pagans, and at the same time on the seizure of Polish Christian lands. Then the castle was built on the Nogat River, named after the Virgin Mary, the patroness of the Teutonic Order.
Originally Marienburg was intended only for the head of the regional division of the Order - the Komtura, but at the first stage it was built with great scope: in the economic records for 1278-1280 years are 4,480,000 units of bricks and tiles. In 1309, the Grand Master of the Order, the Grand Master Siegfried von Feichtwangen, moved to the castle from Venice. Naturally, the change of status was followed by a significant expansion, as a result of which the fortress walls covered an area of 210 thousand square meters.
Marienburg consists of three parts: the Upper, Middle and Lower Castle. In the Lower Castle, the staff and peasants lived under the protection of the castle walls; in the Middle Castle in the 14th century there was a richly decorated palace of great masters; the most notable building of the Upper Castle was the Church of the Virgin Mary. From the water, all this forms an impressive composition of rectangular and round volumes, pointed tents and pliers.
The walls do not look particularly high, but are built according to all the rules of fortification science and are surrounded by water from all sides. The Polish-Lithuanian troops that besieged the castle in 1410 could not take it, but soon after the siege the order had to give it to the Bohemian mercenaries for debts, and they had already sold it in 1457 to the Polish king Casimir IV. The Teutonic capital moved to Koenigsberg, and Marienburg became the residence of the Polish kings. It was not rebuilt: the palace of great masters with an enfilade of spacious and high halls under nervous vaults was not inferior to the magnificence of the royal palace in Krakow.
Samarra is located on the bank of the Tigris River, in the area where the oldest civilization on Earth appeared. By local standards, the minaret is a relatively new construction: the ziggurat in the Urals, for example, dates back to the 21st century BC. But the Mesopotamian monuments were built of unbaked brick: in those days, between the Tigris and the Euphrates there was not only not enough stone, but also wood, which could be used for fuel. Therefore, archeologists have found constructions of legendary Urus and Nineveh in the form of the floating clay breast. Other similar posters