page_title: Austrian walled towns
section_title: Mantelmauer or curtain wall
hierarchical_section_title: Austrian walled towns / Artillery and modification in the 14th and 15th centuries / Mantelmauer or curtain wall
caption_attribution_description: English: Bratislava Town Walls by St Martin's Cathedral. Shows a cross-section of the walls with a 'mantelmaur' in front
context_page_description: Walled towns in Austria started to appear in the 11th century. Their establishment was closely connected with the development of Austria as a march of the Holy Roman Empire and in particular by the Stauffenberg Emperors and their Marcher Lords, the Babenbergs. In present-day Austria, there are 106 towns or cities that were walled. The walls of Radstadt, Freiburg, Hainburg and Drosendorf survive almost intact, and Austria has some of the most impressive walled towns in Europe.
  Other cities or towns such as Vienna, Salzburg and St Pölten have had their defences almost completely obliterated. In Austria, the procedure for granting civic status or creating a Stadt was relatively simple. Initially, a local lord or official ministerialis could petition for market rights or Marktrect. At that point, the town would be laid out by a surveyor and it would have been surrounded by an earthen-banked enclosure surmounted with a vertical wooden palisade. Often a stone gatehouse or Tor would be built for the collection of custom dues from traders coming to the market.
context_section_description: In Austria (and also at the Hussite towns in Bohemia and Moravia such as Tábor, but especially Jihlava) lower secondarywalls (mantelmauern) occur surrounding the main wall.
  Earth was banked between the two walls to take the impact of cannon fire and this meant that the destructive effect of a cannon being fired at point blank range at the base of the main wall could be avoided. Secondary walls often have round towers set into them to fire on attackers entering the ‘dead’ areas between the walls. Outside the secondary wall there would be a wide moat or ditch and sometimes there would be a further low wall surrounding the moat.  In Austria these double circuits are shown on early prints of St Pölten, Krems. Enns, Freistadt, St Veit an Glan, Bruck an der Leitha, Tulln and Vienna. Merian's print of Villach provides a good illustration of multiple walls. At Friesach in Carinthia the double walls still exist on the eastern side and the outer wall is still surrounded by a wide water filled moat.
caption: Bratislava Town Walls. Cross section showing a ‘Mantelmauer’ in front of an earlier wall
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