Wroclaw [antikvár]

Introduction Inside its present boundaries the town of Wroclaw lies almost completely within the area of the preglacial stream valley of the Odra river. This preglacial stream valley, about 10 km. wide, on its right bank reaches the Olesnica plain and on its left bank - the Wroclaw plain. The Hills of Trzebnica in the north and the ál^za Mountains of volcanic origin in the south is the only high ground in the neighbourhood of the town. Besides the Odra, the network of waterways of that region includes the following rivers : Olawa, Sl^za and Bystrzyca whose estuaries are within the area of Wroclaw, as weil as the Widawa river flowing across Psie Pole, now a district of the town. This situation, particularly as the result of the changing bed of the Olawa at its estuary into the Odra, the bed of the latter got split into a number of narrow and shallow beds, thus forming several islands which made it easier for the inhabitants to get across the river. At the same time the islands had natural defence conditions. From a document dating back to about the middle of the lOth century A.D. we know that at that time a part of the Lower Silesia was inhabited by a Slavonic tribe of Sl?zanie who had 15 castle-towns. It is probable that the tribal centre was located on the site of the present town of Wroclaw (the castle-town of Osobowice is probably a relict of that). The post-war archaeological investigation made it possible to find that on one of the Odra islands, later named Ostrów Tumski (The Cathedral Island) a settlement was set up in the middle of the 9th century A.D. and an early feudal castle-town and a suburbium in the lOth century A.D. About 989-990 at the latest Wroclaw and the whole area of Silesia were an integrál part of the State of Mieszko I, the historical Polish prince. Both, as the result of its size and significance in 1000 King Boleslaw the Brave founded one of the three bishoprics of the country there and soon afterwards Wroclaw began to be regarded as one of the main cities of the Kingdom of Poland. During the second quarter of the 12th c. A.D. organized settlements expanded onto the neighbouring island, called Góra Piaskowa (the Island of the Sand) and onto another island situated north of the Cathedral Island, called the Island of Olbin. A monastefy of Canons Regular (Augustine Friars) dedicated to Our Lady was the centre of the Former and the Benedictine Fathers' Monastery was the centre of the latter. The oldest road across the Island of the Sand, adjacent to the Cathedral Island and Olbin was running from Prague (probably from the Adriatic Sea) in the direction of Poznan, Gniezno and the Baltic Sea. This road was already used at the beginning of the Polish Statehood and had probably been in use still earlier. Another road built a little later and crossing the flrst one on the left bank of the Odra was running from Russia and Cracow westwards to Leipzig. In connection with the first road it was necessary to make conditions for convenient crossing of the Odra and therefore as early as 1149 a mention was made of a bridge linking the left bank of the river with the Island of the Sand. Organized settling on the left bank of the Odra within the area of the cross-road (a little south of St. Adalbert's church) to the bridge of the Island of the Sand began in the middle of the 12th c. But between 1214-32 Henry the Bearded began setting up a town a little way westwards, the centre of which became a square, now called the Markét Place. That town was destroyed as a result of the Tartars' raid in 1241 but soon afterwards its reconstruction was resumed within the boundaries of the first moat. This moat was most probably created as a result of regulation of the former bed of the Olawa and the town was established on one of the islands. The