If it wasn’t the French, it was the Austrians. Or the Swedes. Or the Germans.

This story goes back to the 30 Year War (1618-1648) and before.

The Swedes turned up in 1631,  left in 1636 and were replaced by the French from 1644-1650.

At around this time, Elector Prince Johann Philipp von Schönborn thought “Sod this for a game of soldiers, I’m going to build some defenses”.

Starting with the Zitadelle and a wall around the city.

Which didn’t keep the French out (1688-89, 1792, 1794-97, the list is endless….)

One of the structures designed to keep the city safe was the Klubistenschanze, built in 1793 on a hill high above Zahlbach – I’ve hit 52km/h on the bike down that hill… – and replaced between 1841-48 by Fort Stahlberg, the tower of which features in today’s photo.

A developer bought the 6000m2 a few years back and built some snazzy Bauhaus-ish houses within the walls of the fort.

Talk about a “gated community”…

03 Jan This entry was published on 3 January, 2013 at 13:00. It’s filed under Architecture, History, Mainz and tagged Fort Stahlberg, Johann Philipp von Schönborn, Klubistenschanze. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.