THE OLD AND NEW CASTLES IN THE TOWN OF ROHATYN: DEVELOPMENT OF PLANNING STRUCTURE AND ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

According to historical documents, the city of Rohatyn was one of the most developed and well-fortified cities in Ukraine during the 16th and 17th centuries. From the city's founding, two structural parts were planned: the town center (sredmiste) and the castle. The development of the town center and its urban structure has been analyzed in several of our previous scholarly works. Despite significant destruction during the First and Second World Wars, the town center has retained its historical layout and part of its architecture. The city's fortifications, however, have been irretrievably lost. On the site where the castle once stood, no structures have survived, and today, the city authorities plan to develop residential quarters in this area as part of urban planning projects. The aim of our publication is to illustrate what the architectural complex of the Rohatyn castle was like and to create scientific prerequisites for archaeological research and for revising the plans for the use of this territory. The castle, its history, and its architecture remain largely unexplored. By the end of the 17th century, the castle consisted of two parts: the Old Castle and the New Castle. Three unidentified buildings from the New Castle have survived to this day. As for the Old Castle, researchers have only determined its location. The scientific literature does not provide detailed coverage of the layout and architecture of both castles during the 15th-18th centuries. In our article on this subject, published in issue 10 of this journal (Nr. 10, pp. 17-29: Notes on the History and Architectural- Planning Reconstruction of the Rohatyn Castle), we presented materials on the location, territorial configuration, and general layout of the castle complex. It was established that the complex consisted of two adjacent parts connected to each other. Based on newly acquired materials, we can now conduct a deeper analysis of the castle's history, particularly using the texts of the castle's inspections from 1663 and 1725, and employ the 1666 drawing of the church and castle as an iconographic source. From the analysis of these sources, we attempt to determine which objects constituted the castle complex and the elements that made up the structure of its fortifications. By systematizing information from maps and two inventory descriptions, we reconstruct the stages of development and architecture of the castle buildings and offer a hypothetical graphic reconstruction of the Old Castle's layout, the layout of thepalace building, and the hypothetical appearance of the castle's northern façade during the late 17th to early 18th century. Based on the results of the investigation, a hypothetical graphic reconstruction of the planning structure of the Old and New Castles was performed. The planning structure of the palace as at the tiime of the beginning of the 18th century has been reproduced. On the basis of a schematic drawing from the 17th century, we performed a graphic reconstruction of the appearance of the defensive walls and buildings of the Old Castle from the north side.