TOWERS AND FORTRESSES - FORTRESS GRIPE, 17TH CENTURY

FORTRESS GRIPE The history of the construction of the Baroque star-shaped walls in Split, with five fortified bastions filled up with soil, is usually linked to the names of a number of Venetian military engineers. Owing to the military draftsmen and engineers who applied special precision in drawing up projects or reviewing the state of affairs of the fortifications in Split, as well as the preserved city plans from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, we can reconstruct the sequence of the construction and the look of the Split fortifications as well as all the significant formal and content-related changes that had occurred. The idea about a fortress with bastions filled up with soil developed for the first time in the 30s of the 17th century, when the Venetian head of government, Antonio Pisani and the French engineer Antoine de Ville presented a report about the state of the city walls of Split. They declared that the city will be unable to resist a stronger attack unless such a fortress with five bastions were erected. The layout project of the Split fortifications was made by engineer Alessandro Magli. According to his design, the defence of the city would be improved by the building of lengthy covered streets (Italian: strade coperte) in front of the existing city walls. The building according to Magli’s project started in 1656, but only two bastions and a wall-curtain (Italia: cortina) were erected during his lifetime. One could speculate that Magli was also the author of the project for another fortress in Split, the Bačvice Fortress (Boticelle) at the eastern entrance to the port of Split. Both fortresses are examples of detached fortifications with bastions that, like the Split city walls, are related to Vauban’s fortification system. The role of these fortifications was to put up defence in the eastern part of the city. The building of the Fortress Gripe was then continued by Camillo Gonzaga at the beginning of the year 1657. Along with this he started the construction of the Bačvice Fortress, and both fortresses could be put to use after a few months in the same year to defend the city against the Turkish attacks. The Fortress Gripe was finally completed in 1660, though it had never received its north-western bastion, shown on the idealized plan of the Venetian cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli, dated 1657. The final look of the Baroque fortresses of Split was determined by the project drawn up by Innocentio Conti. As can be proved by many maps, the Baroque fortification of Split had the layout design as part of an ideal heptagon that would spread like a fan, with bastions on top, all around the city. The construction began in 1661, with the erection of the central northern bastion Cornaro, and finished in 1668, when the north-western bastion Priuli was erected.