Toruń Castle

Toruń Castle was among the first the Teutonic Order raised in the territory enfeoffed to it by Duke Konrad I of Masovia, and the first stronghold in masonry in the Chełmno Land. Building probably began after 1236, the year the town was moved to its present site, and went on for about a century. The Order held it as the base from which the knights began their first mission to colonise the pagan Old Prussians and, after that, the building of the Teutonic state; its first known use was as the residence of a commander. The new town of Toruń grew up alongside the fortifications that protected it.

The site was bounded on the west by the valley of the Postolec, on the north-west by the stream called the Młynówka, and on the east by the commander's pond. A stone wall went up between 1236 and 1260 on a horseshoe plan, with the rectangular Convent House closing the south side towards the Vistula, an earlier arrangement than the regular four-winged conventual castle the Order later made its standard. The horseshoe may follow the line of an older earth-and-timber rampart, though that would need archaeological work to confirm. The way into the courtyard ran in from the west, and a castle chapel of the Holy Cross is on record by 1263.

Early in the 14th century the garrison got a great tower, the stołp, octagonal in plan and about ten metres across, reached by a small bridge from the east building put up at the same time. From that building a masonry gallery on a pier ran to the gdanisko, the dansker, which served as a latrine and as a fighting tower. The same century brought a parcham, a second circuit of walls, a gatehouse over the entry passage and a water-filled moat on the north and west. The castle was enlarged in 1392, and by about 1400 masonry ranges for the garrison and the Order's administration stood along the inner face of the wall.

On 7 August 1410, after the town had paid homage, the castle was taken over by the forces of the Kingdom of Poland, and Zbigniew of Brzezie, Marshal of the Kingdom, was given charge of it. King Władysław Jagiełło rode in on 28 September that year and took a meal there. In November the Order came back for it: Heinrich von Plauen the elder and the komtur Eberhart von Wallenfels laid siege, and the Poles held the place until the First Peace of Toruń was concluded in February 1411.

The castle burned in 1420 and was given new roofs in 1446. In 1452 the Grand Master Ludwig von Erlichshausen met King Casimir IV Jagiellon within its walls.

On 6 February 1454, two days after the secret council of the Prussian Confederation resolved to renounce obedience to the Order, a delegation of the Toruń town council demanded that the garrison give up the castle. The komtur in command, Albrecht Kalb, refused, and on 7 February the townsmen opened their attack, the signal for the rising the Prussian Confederation led against the Order. The garrison was gone by 8 February, though its going is told two ways: that the knights capitulated that day under the townsmen's fire, and that the small garrison negotiated a surrender and were allowed to walk out of both castle and town.

The castle was plundered on 8 February, and the rebellion marked the opening of the Thirteen Years' War of 1454 to 1466. The townspeople blew up the great tower and started pulling down the walls, the Old Town council setting aside the considerable sum of 85 marks for the work, its object being to leave the knights nothing to reoccupy.

After 1485 the burghers of Toruń built the Burgher Court, the seat of the Brotherhood of St George, on part of the castle walls, and turned the courtyard into a rubbish dump. Between 1600 and 1613 a small sconce was thrown up on the site as part of the bastion works defending the town, and in the 19th century the ruins of the main castle were adapted as a cavalier of the Toruń Fortress.

The cellar vaults were rebuilt before 1966, and in that year the castle was partly excavated, rebuilt and made a historical monument for the 500th anniversary of the Second Peace of Toruń. The ruins were conserved between 2006 and 2011. The largest piece still standing is the dansker, over a stream that runs into the Vistula. The cellars survive as well, and most of the site's permanent displays are set out in their vaults. The castle is a registered immovable monument in Poland and part of the Medieval Town of Toruń, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a Historic Monument of Poland.