The Fortification Structures from Lipova at the End of the Middle Ages and in the Ottoman Period. A reassessment of the Available Sources.

Abstract

The successive administrations of Lipova (Lippa) from the end of the Middle Ages until the modern period determined numerous changes relative to its historical topography and urban structures, including its fortifications. The direct association of the settlement with the Hungarian royalty in the fourteenth century, the transition from the fifteenth-century oppidum to the urban status of the sixteenth century and the shaping of a regional administrative centre according to Ottoman traditions generated a highly dynamic historical topography. The scholarly debate on the fortified structures of Lipova can be traced back to the second half of the nineteenth century. Its unknowns and discussions range from the simultaneous number of fortifications directly connected to the late medieval urban centre, their dating, exact location, extent, and particular architectural components. In the last century, scientists revisited the topic circumstantially. It remained problematic, primarily because all the material traces of the fortifications were demolished at the beginning of the 1700s, and they still await archaeological investigations. In the stated circumstances, we resume discussing the available sources that can help us reconstruct the configuration of fortifications during the fifteenth–seventeenth centuries by presenting their potential. Our preliminary study confronts the sparse archaeological data with pragmatic literature, narrative sources, and highly overlooked cartographic documents. Above all, we examine the cartographic sources of the late seventeenth century and their historical context because they recorded the spatial outline and the coexistence of three fortified precincts one inside another. The combined sources show that the medieval castle persisted at the very core of a mid-sixteenth-century bastion fortification encircled by the ample town precinct.