Zprávy památkové péče 2015, 75(6):532-538

Discovery, conservation, and presentation of fragments of architectural structures of Nové Město in Litomyšl

Miroslava Cejpová, Petr Rohlíček, František R. Václavík, Bohdan Šeda

In 2012-2013, the "Revitalization of the historic building of the Regional Museum in Litomyšl" was carried out. Archaeological research was conducted in April 2012 to June 2012 (fact-finding research) and in October 2012 to October 2013 (recovery research). The Regional Museum in Litomyšl is housed in the former Piarist grammar school. The areas north were investigated thoroughly, while east of the museum the basement space of the entrance integrated building was only partly so. The investigated area lies within the originally demarcated bishop grounds, later the castle grounds. Roughly from the late 13th to the early 15th century, the city cemetery encroached into part of the investigated area. Sometime before 1490, this space was occupied by the Nové (New), also known as the Horní (Upper) Město, founded by Bohuš Kostka of Postupice, completed around 1510. The Nové Město was hit by two fires, the first in 1546, then the second in 1635, after which it was no longer rebuilt. Part of the town was also taken up by the buildings of the Piarist monastery. Archaeological research discovered, among other things, fragments of houses of the Nové Město. The best preserved structures were located in the northern part of the investigated area. A massive wall was found here with a thickness of about 140 cm, made of quarry stone with lime mortar. It runs through the center of the trench in a NNW-SSE direction. On the south side it turns westward and behind the break it is opened by a drive-through gate building preserved incompletely at the ground floor level. This massive wall is founded in a terrain originally sloping from the castle hill into the valley of the river Loučná. Before the wall, on the side of the lower town, there passed a route with a boulder base. The wall and gateway apparently belonged to the fortification of Nové Město, and it is likely that they tied into the older fortifications documented in written records. During the life of Kostka's Horní Město, significant modifications were carried out on these structures. The wall and gate were used for newly built homes that were positioned perpendicular to the axis of the route and the castle walls. The masonry of these buildings, joined with clay mortar, was discovered on the western side of the wall, where a dwelling was found, an originally vaulted and heated interior adjacent to a corridor to a cellar located east of the wall. Also, directly at the gate, there was a small nearly-rectangular space adjacent to the southern angled section of the wall. In connection with the construction of the houses, the wall was broken in three places and reinforced beneath the foundation joint in the area of the cellar. The scope of the preserved construction was so vast that an expert committee recommended its preservation and presentation. This led to a change in the project documentation. The discovered structures were, according to the modified project, included in the integrated entrance object, which produces a simple cladding over the finding, equipped with a waterproofing and thermal insulation layer on a reinforced concrete structure. The shape of the cladding allows for the movement of people in the archeological area, which occurs only in exceptional cases, and a tour of the discovered findings through the glass walls of the museum. At the same time, it functions as a load-bearing structure for the reinforced ground in front of the northeastern facade of the historic museum building. Its main purpose is to maintain stable microclimate conditions in the archeological area. The technical condition of the structure was very bad after the completion of the archaeological research. Given that regular visitors are presented with the archeological area only by visual contact through the glass walls of the museum, it was possible to apply a consistent conservation preservation principle. Interventions into the damaged structures were minimized to adjustments which led to the fundamental stabilization of the parts of the wall in acute disrepair. In other cases, the complete preservation of the exposed archaeological situation always took precedence without further interventions to the fragmental state of the wall, to the surface of the structure, and to some extent also to the height levels of the backfills. Other broken and missing parts of the wall, where not even an original stone was preserved from the destroyed section, were filled in only to the extent necessary to limit the possibility of further destruction by using a different material. In February 2014, grey-white fine growths of mold began to appear on the surface of the wall (stone and plaster). Based on analyses, remediation was carried out using a fungicide spray on a non-chloride base, the surfaces were cleaned, and ventilation was improved in the archeological area in the protected building. After the treatment, the fungus no longer appeared.

Keywords: Nové Město in Litomyšl, archaeological recovery research, conservation of fragments of architectural structures, presentation of archaeological findings

Published: December 1, 2015  Show citation