Fortifications

Defensive Walls in Nysa

Nysa, the residential city of the Wrocław bishops, was surrounded by brick fortifications in the mid-14th century, under Bishop Przecław of Pogorzela. The circuit comprised four gates and twenty-eight bastions; an outer second wall ran around it, attested by a mention of the inter-wall space from 1414. The walls are gone today, but two gate towers still stand.

Two surviving towers

The Wrocław Tower on Wrocławska Street is white, two-storey, crowned with a rich Renaissance attic. The Ziębice Tower on Szopena Street is a four-storey Gothic structure from 1350, built of brick with darker vitrified brick laid in Flemish bond; it is topped by an arrow-slit gallery with an ornamental parapet. In the Renaissance the tower was heightened, and in the 19th century renovated and rebuilt; it is open seasonally and serves as a viewing point over the town. Fragments of the old fortifications also survive near the Bishop's Court and the Wrocław Gate.

The lion of Ziębice

In 1922 a stone figure of a lion, carved probably in the 16th century, was set in the niche above the entrance to the Ziębice Tower. According to tradition it was war booty taken by Nysa burghers on a military expedition to Ziębice in 1489.

Practicalities

Both towers stand in the centre, by the ring boulevards: Wrocławska and Szopena streets. Nearby is the Nysa fortress (0.2 km), and further the castle in Otmuchów (11 km) and the walls of Paczków (23 km).