St. Elisabeth Bastion in Gdańsk, Defensive bastion in Gdańsk, Poland.
St. Elisabeth Bastion is a fortification in Gdańsk with a three-tiered structure of low rampart, central rampart, and cavalier, containing multiple casemates built into its thick walls. The structure displays the system of walls and fortified positions that once protected the city from attack.
A rondel with a moat, named after the nearby St. Elisabeth church, was built here between 1554 and 1557 in the Old Italian style. In 1563 the Radunia Gate was added, letting the Radunia Canal pass through the moat, and from 1574 a curtain wall linked the rondel to the Upland Gate. Between 1636 and 1639 it was rebuilt as an earth-rampart bastion of the Old Dutch type. Levelling from 1893 removed the escarpments and exposed the casemates.
The name comes from the nearby St. Elisabeth church, not a hospital. The roundel built in 1554–1557 was later enlarged with the Radunia Gate, a passage for the Radunia Canal through the moat. The bastion's earthworks were levelled from 1893, and its lower northern face survives as the embankment of Podwale Grodzkie Street.
The bastion survives only in fragments: the casemates exposed when the slopes were levelled from 1893, and the lower part of the northern face, now the embankment of the paved southern stretch of ul. Podwale Grodzkie. The rampart's outline can be read opposite the warehouses at Podwale Grodzkie 2H. The site lies on the route between the Main Station and the Old Town, so it is passed on foot rather than visited as a separate stop.
The bastion's casemates were only exposed in the 1890s, when levelling work from 1893 removed the surrounding slopes. The southern part was then given to the garrison headquarters building, today's Nowy Ratusz. The shape of the bastion can still be read in the embankment of the paved southern stretch of ul. Podwale Grodzkie, for example opposite the warehouses at Podwale Grodzkie 2H.
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