Spalentor (Spalen Gate) - Denkmalpflege

Spalentor (Spalen Gate)
The building and complex
The Spalentor or Spalen Gate was part of the extensive fortifications
built following the great earthquake of 1356.
These walled in both the city of Basel and the settlements
that had sprung up outside the inner wall in the course of
the thirteenth century. Work on the excavation of the
ditches began in 1361/62. This was followed by the building
of the various walls and towers so that by the time the
project was completed in 1398, the fortifications consisted
of seven large gates, 40 towers, 42 battlements and approx.
1,200 merlons, and encompassed a city with sufficient
living space for 20,000 inhabitants.
Of all the seven city gates that Basel once boasted, the
Spalentor is certainly the most impressive and the most
beautiful. The tower was completed in 1400 following the
addition of the steeply pitched pyramidal roof.
Most of the glazed tiles arranged in a diamond­shaped
pattern on all four sides of the roof are replacements dating
from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The original
glazed tiles are thought to have been added in 1468.
In 1473/74, the City Council commissioned the mason
Jakob Sarbach to build the crenellated gatehouse that originally
protruded into the ditch and was furnished with a
drawbridge. Before the century was over, a barbican had
been added on the opposite side of the ditch, which by the
early seventeenth century had mutated into a sprawling
complex comprising several barriers as well as two squat
corner towers (see the Merian map).
The Spalentor acquired the monument­like character it
has today when the city wall was razed in 1866. Access to
the upper storeys was ensured by installing a stone spiral
staircase inside the northern flanking tower. The gatehouse
underwent extensive repairs in 1890 and it was in
Spalentor (Spalen Gate), detail. Picture postcard, c. 1930.
Archives of Kantonale Denkmalpflege Basel-Stadt
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Spalentor (Spalen Gate), c. 1900.
Archives of Kantonale Denkmalpflege Basel-Stadt
the course of this work that twenty­two of the original corbel
figures were taken to the Historical Museum and
replaced by replicas made by the stonemason Jean Hym.
When the gate was again renovated in 1931–34, the original
statues from the west façade were also removed and
taken to the museum. By 1984, the merlons and remaining
figures on the gatehouse were so badly weathered that they
also had to be replaced by replicas (made by the stonemasons
Markus Horisberg and Ludwig Stocker). There was a
gatekeeper in residence at the Spalentor right up to 1880.
His quarters are now occupied by the corporation of the
Spalen forgate “Zur Krähe”.
The Spalentor consists of a large square tower and two
round flanking towers with crenellated tops facing outwards
from the city. Whereas the upper storeys of the round
towers are octagonal, the square tower ends in a steeply
pitched pyramidal roof with a balustraded gallery at its
base. The west façade with its sculpted embellishments
originally faced out of the city, although today it looks out
onto Missionsstrasse, a street inside the city limits.

Matthäus Merian, Map of the city of Basel, 1617. Detail with Spalentor
(Spalen Gate) and barriers as well as two squat corner towers.
Archives of Kantonale Denkmalpflege Basel-Stadt
The sculptures
Above the gateway: a city of Basel coat­of­arms on an escutcheon
held aloft by two rampant lions dating from c. 1400;
a statue of the Virgin cast as the Queen of Heaven with
crown and sceptre and in her arms the infant Jesus. The
clouds below the crescent moon at her feet are populated
by five angelic minstrels holding a fiddle, organ (portable),
dulcimer, lute and shawm. The Virgin is flanked by two
Old Testament prophets, identified variously as Isaiah and
Micah or as Enoch and Elijah (?), c. 1420 (replicas).
Inside the gateway: keystone of the vaulting with
angelic figure, c. 1400. On the gatehouse: numerous corbel
figures, all of which are replicas dating from 1984, based
loosely on the originals now in the Historical Museum. On
the merlons: two warriors in full armour holding escutcheons,
1473/74 (replicas).
The façade facing into the city features one of Basel’s
famous “Basler Dybli” (Basle Dove) letterboxes designed by
Melchior Berri in 1844.
The gates
The portcullis is a grille made of oak beams whose pointed
ends are capped with iron. It was raised and lowered inside
two grooves with a winch.
Use was also made of a system of twelve oak beams that
could be lowered individually (like those installed in the
St. Johanns­Tor in 1582). These were suspended by ropes
and rings at the top, while their pointed ends at the bottom
were again capped with iron.
July 2003
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The large oak door, whose hinges rest inside huge, drumlike
bearings inside the passageway, used to be closed at
sundown every day until the law requiring this was
repealed in 1859. Latecomers could still slip into the city
by way of the little “manhole” known as the “eye of the
needle”.
The side door in the gatehouse originally opened onto
the ditch, which was eventually converted into plots of
land that became very popular as allotment gardens. There
were vineyards (each with its own little shed) in front of
the Spalentor right up to the mid­nineteenth century.
View of Spalentor (Spalen Gate) from Spalengraben.
Photo A. Ballié, Archives of Kantonale Denkmalpflege Basel-Stadt