Martinsturm: Bregenz’s Medieval Granary and Chapel Tower
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Austria
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Tower
On this page12 sections
History
Martinsturm is a medieval tower in Bregenz, Austria, that began as a thirteenth-century granary and later became a chapel, lookout, and city-history museum. Standing in the Upper Town within the surviving enclosure of Bregenz’s medieval city walls, it is now one of the city’s landmarks.
Medieval granary and chapel
Shortly after Bregenz’s city wall was built, during the first half of the thirteenth century, a low tower was erected in the first courtyard of the Counts of Bregenz. Its original structure consisted of a cellar and two upper stories. It served as a storehouse and carried a pyramidal roof that rose slightly above the adjoining wall.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, a small chapel was created in the tower’s upper story and decorated with frescoes. In 1362, Wilhelm VII of Montfort, a member of the Montfort comital dynasty, endowed the Chapel of Saint Martin. The Counts of Montfort were a medieval noble family that ruled territories in the Alpine Rhine region, including the area around Bregenz. The new endowment enlarged the chapel to fill the entire upper-story floor plan.
The chapel probably served the Counts of Bregenz or their retainers as a castle chapel. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the ground floor was incorporated into the chapel, joining it with the room above. A sacrament niche, a wall recess for the Eucharist or other sacred objects, was made in 1497.
Early modern rebuilding
Between 1599 and 1601, Bregenz commissioned Benedetto Prato, a master builder from Graubünden, to remodel the tower. The work added three stories and crowned the building with a large onion-shaped cupola. Its form makes a planned military purpose largely unlikely. The enlarged tower was more probably conceived as a prestige building and belvedere, an elevated structure intended to provide a broad view.
The rebuilding also gave Martinsturm a practical civic role after Bregenz’s major city fire of 1581. A tower watchman used the height of the building to look for new fires. In 1602, the Bregenz master builder Hundertpfund added the covered wooden staircase on the exterior.
In 1648, the city mayor Johann Deuring ordered the frescoes to be covered with whitewash. The Chapel of Saint Martin was later enlarged again. Construction of a nave adjoining the tower began in 1701, and the new chapel was consecrated in 1705 for the local population. It opened directly into the tower, which consequently became the chapel’s choir area.
Rediscovery and museum use
Between 1910 and 1914, the Feldkirch painter Florus Scheel uncovered the frescoes once more. Their recovery restored a major part of the tower’s medieval religious imagery to view.
A small military-history museum occupied the tower from 1986 to 2010. Since late April 2015, Martinsturm has housed a city-history museum with a permanent exhibition that also presents the history of the building. The tower remains within the roughly rectangular enclosure formed by Bregenz’s thirteenth- to sixteenth-century city walls and occupies the northeastern corner of that fortified area.
Remains
Tower and chapel layout
Exterior tower
Martinsturm preserves the medieval tower’s cellar and lower structure together with the three stories added during the rebuilding of 1599 to 1601. Its upper level has a loggia, an open-sided roofed gallery, with three arched openings on columns on each side. A stone parapet encloses the gallery. Above it rises a tall, curved onion-shaped cupola with a lantern, the small raised structure set above a dome or roof. The cupola has a square ground plan and is covered with wooden shingles, features that distinguish its form from many other onion-cupola towers.
The uppermost story provides a 360-degree view over Bregenz. The building’s position at the northeastern corner of the city-wall enclosure reinforces that corner of the historic fortified area. The covered wooden staircase built in 1602 remains an important part of the tower’s external form.
Saint Martin Chapel
The chapel’s earliest arrangement occupied one corner of the upper story. From 1362, it extended across the entire upper-story plan. By the late fifteenth century, the upper chapel and the room below had been connected. The nave attached to the western side from 1701 opens from the interior into the tower’s ground floor, making the tower the choir of the enlarged Chapel of Saint Martin.
The choir contains frescoes painted in several periods, with many dating from around 1362 and 1420. The scenes include episodes from Christ’s birth, childhood, and Passion, as well as images of Mary and numerous saints. A large image of Saint Christopher carrying the Christ Child through water appears at the far left of the cycle.
Medieval fresco cycles
East wall
The east wall’s lower register includes a donor portrait of Count Wilhelm III of Montfort dated 1363. Other donor portraits represent noble families, probably ministerial families. Ministerials were members of the lower nobility who served a lord in administrative, military, or household roles.
The upper register presents a possibly saintly king whose identity remains uncertain, Joseph’s dream with a scroll quoting Matthew 1:20, and the enthroned pregnant Mary. The Crucifixion shows Mary and John together with a Montfort count in armor holding a coat of arms. Nearby, Saint George fights the dragon while rescuing a maiden, Saint Oswald brings Christianity to England, and Saint Martin shares his cloak with a beggar. Saint Martin was a fourth-century bishop of Tours traditionally associated with this act of charity.
The lower register includes Christ on the Mount of Olives with an angel and three sleeping disciples. A broken window cut through part of this scene. Nearby are a kneeling donor before the enthroned Mary, a remnant of an older Passion scene, the Arrest of Christ with Judas’s kiss, the Flagellation, the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the Cross, and the Crucifixion with Mary. The register also contains a leaf ornament above the central window, a later Saint Christopher in the right window reveal, and a partially destroyed Resurrection.
West wall
The west wall’s upper register depicts scenes from the childhood of Jesus. They include the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Christ Child by the Three Magi beneath the Star of Bethlehem, the Presentation in the Temple, the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple, and Mary with Christ, probably an appearance of the risen Christ. Two kneeling donors appear above the window, one a monk or abbot in a dark habit holding a staff and book.
The middle register shows the voyage of Saint Ursula and her virgins along the Rhine, the Entombment of Christ with a cross behind it, and the Last Supper. Mary Magdalene dries Christ’s feet with her hair, while Saint Paul also appears in the scene. An inscription identifies his presence as an anachronistic inclusion. Nine saints occupy another part of the west-wall cycle, including John the Baptist, Sigismund, Anthony the Abbot, Leonard, Stephen, George, and Catherine. The window reveal contains a possible angel with a scroll and Christ as the Man of Sorrows, while a man wearing a Jewish hat presses the Crown of Thorns onto Christ’s head.
The fragmentary lower register preserves two donor portraits with long scrolls, an inscription beginning with “anno dni,” Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows, a coat of arms, and a standing figure beside the window with another figure who may be kneeling. The scene may represent another Annunciation.
Saints and devotional scenes
One fresco group presents three scenes from the life of Saint Eligius beneath a continuous arcade. In one, the enthroned saint holds a large chalice and blacksmith’s tongs while pinching the nose of a female-shaped devil with bird’s feet. Another depicts the legend of Eligius as a farrier, and a third shows him in episcopal vestments. Eligius was a seventh-century bishop and former metalworker, commonly represented with smithing tools.
Additional paintings show Saint Catherine of Alexandria with a saintly bishop, a sleeping saint dreaming of a ladder descending from heaven as Christ comes down it, and three crowned figures below. Another scene presents the Madonna and Child with Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Anthony the Abbot. Saint Kümmernis, also called Wilgefortis, appears with blood from the wound in her right foot being collected in a chalice. She is a legendary female saint traditionally shown as a crucified or wounded figure.
Other fragmentary paintings include a badly damaged saint holding tongs, possibly another image of Saint Eligius; Saint Leonard with a chain; a damaged bishop with a tree or shrub behind him; and a haloed female figure between the windows above the wall tabernacle, a repository for consecrated objects. She holds a branch and a large vessel, possibly a jug.
