Architecture in Trzebiatów

The city features architectural elements from the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, and Modernist periods.

The city was established under Lübeck law, resulting in a regular medieval town plan with a market square and a chessboard street grid.

[2] The irregular rectangular plan, with rounded corners on the eastern side, included the site of the ducal residence and the oldest Church of St. Nicholas.

[2] At the city's center, a market square measuring 94 by 104 meters was created, while the construction of the town's parish church was planned in the quarter to the northeast.

[1] The quarters, shaped as squares and rectangles, were formed by a regular network of 14 streets intersecting at right angles, with slight distortions in the eastern part.

[1][3][4] In 1299, Trzebiatów was granted permission by Bogislaw IV to build defensive walls and moats (which were completed by 1337).

Brick houses likely began to appear only towards the end of the 14th century, due to the growing wealth of the burghers (especially merchants).

The first fire broke out in 1344, destroying the mills, the monastery, and the northern part of the city, the second occurred in 1377, though there is no data on its consequences.

The space of the entire house was filled with a lobby, with a height of 3–4 meters, only a small room (in the right corner) was built.

[1] A late Gothic and early Renaissance composition with a decorated façade is the house at 27 Rynek Street, divided at the ground level by a portal and two wide windows.

[1] According to iconographic sources, the house at 7 Rynek Street had a very interesting Renaissance decoration, reconstructed in 1900 and recently transformed.

[7] The oldest view of the town is featured on the vignette of the map of the Duchy of Pomerania by E. Lubinus from 1618, showing the panorama of Trzebiatów from the southeast.

[2] The dense town buildings surrounded by defensive walls, with the Kaszana Tower and the Gryficka, Kołobrzeska gates and their foregates, are visible.

[2][8] Significant changes in the method of building houses occurred at the end of the 17th century when construction work in the city intensified.

The highest concentration of plots was found on the eastern side of the church and along the northern stretch of the defensive walls.

The rebuilding of the town made use of surviving fragments of basement walls, introducing various savings methods.

[1] According to Z. Radacki, during the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the principle was the uniform color application of architectural details and separate backgrounds for façades.

Narrow, cross-cut communication paths with stairs in the central parts of buildings remained on the ground floors.

These losses were quickly recovered because the city's economic condition in the second half of the 18th century was much better than in earlier years.

The decoration of the façades was limited to bands, shallowly profiled cornices, window and door surrounds with keys.

They were often remodeled, adapting interiors for shops and services, which involved creating openings in the façades and adding storefronts and new entrances, separate from the residential ones.

It was constructed on four oak pillars, joined by iron clamps (replacing the older arch bridge, Jachwerk, which had served for 50 years).

Around 1907, right next to the city walls, near the former Gryfice Gate, an unknown townsman built a tenement house in the Art Nouveau style.

The façades of the house were decorated with motifs of swans, delicate mallow branches, and other details typical of the style.

The building had a mansard roof and was decorated with cartouches, but its form was closer to Baroque architecture than Art Nouveau.

[7] In the 1970s, the western frontage was rebuilt, with several nearly identical buildings erected in place of the former houses, set gable-end to the market square.

[7] During the same period, several multi-family, multi-story residential buildings were erected in two quarters to the north of the church, introducing elements that were completely foreign to the historical city layout.

[7] In the post-war period, the city's buildings were used, renovated, and reconstructed in ways that showed little respect for their historical value.

[7] Despite the errors in spatial development, the old town of Trzebiatów still represents a unique and richest ensemble of historical burgher houses in Western Pomerania.

In 1996, Trzebiatów was included in the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage's "Saving Historic Towns" program.