TOWERS AND FORTRESSES - MINCETA

The postage stamps have been issued in the 20-stamp sheets. The Croatian Post issued First Day Cover (FDC) too. MINČETA The most prominent point of the defence system of Dubrovnik turned toward the inland is the round tower of Minčeta. Its name is derived from the family name of the noble family Menčetić, as it was built on the land the family owned at some earlier time. It dominates the northwest raised part of the city and the city walls by its height and volume. It was first built in 1319 as a strong rectangular tower, and the builder was the master builder from Dubrovnik, Nicifor Ranjina. When the fall of Istanbul took place in 1453, it was an unmistakable and clear signal for the citizens of Dubrovnik to undertake comprehensive defence measures, one of the first and most important being the strengthening of this, the most prominent part of the fortification. The Republic invited one of the most eminent master builders in Europe, the Florentine Michelozzo di Bartolomeo, to come and help with the building. The rebuilding of the Minčeta tower in 1461 belongs to the main projects executed by Michelozzo in the middle of the 15th century. Michelozzo had a wide rounded fortification built around the existing rectangular tower, suitable to the new methods of waging war, and he had it joined to the newly built system of the low sloped bulwark that he had had built in front of the northern line of the medieval city walls. This means that the inland part, from where greatest danger would be threatening, was fortified in a modern way, almost unique in the world in the sixties of the 15th century. This imposing cylinder, without a slope or escarpment cut into the ground at the base, with a thin cordoned cornice without corbels, houses casemates connected with three circular corridors. Michelozzo prepared the first floor as a covered entrance from which point he arranged the circular development of his corridors, leaving the terminal crown untouched. There is no certain proof that the polygonal base is also Michelozzo’s work. Taking into consideration the Bokar tower, also called Zvjezdan, it could be assumed that he had an idea about a rounded base for the Minčeta tower, but that it was later executed in polygonal shape. Immediately upon the sudden departure of the famous Michelozzo, the construction site of the Dubrovnik walls was taken over by Juraj Dalmatinac, so it is possible that he had arrived on account of Michelozzo’s recommendation. What remained for him to do was to introduce a modern dragging of the defence mechanism into the lower parts and thus make it suitable to the remaining part of the old rectangular tower. He also had to continue building the tower upwards, applying the already old-fashioned technique, contrary to Michelozzo, in order enable the defence forces to gather on the crown. Juraj Dalmatinac encircled one part of the rectangular tower by a cylinder plane of very thick walls, leaving a deep cutting open to the city, the way it used to be in the old Minčeta. The present-day shape of the Minčeta tower, with its crown archaically rising above the contemporary edifice built by Michelozzo, was completed by the successors of Juraj Dalmatinac in 1464. It has remained to be the symbol of the unconquerable city to the present time.