Original scientific paper
Golubarda in Čelopeci
Patricija Veramenta-Paviša
Abstract
Golubarda pigeon-house is located in Čelopeci, Župa dubrovačka, on the southern edge of a small wood, north of the Dominican Monastery of St. Vincent Ferrer, overlooking the entire northern Župa dubrovačka and the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Square in plan, the pigeon-house is a small single-storey tower, built from the regularly cut blocks of somewhat rustic stonework, covered with lime mortar from the outside. Prior to the beginning of the reconsctruction in 2003, the building was without several top rows of stone and the roof construction. The loft has an opening on each side, at the foot of which originally stood a stone console beautifully decorated with the double volute motif, twice scrolled. The ground floor is entered from the west, with a smaller window facing south. The interior of the pigeon-house was subdivided into two spaces by a wooden mezzanine construction. While the lower area functioned as a small barn, the walls of the loft contained the pigeon holes, built in brick and covered with a smooth layer of lime mortar. According to the findings, Golubarda had 64 nests which implies that about 50 pigeons may have nested there. A stone ground-floor cottage adjoined the east front of Golubarda. Dating of the pigeon-house as well as the identity of its first owners still remain open. In the past pigeons were raised for pleasure, sport and message carrying, but most of all for food and guano, a highly valued fertilizer. That is why pigeon-houses were to be found on almost every late medieval manorial estate in Europe, the construction of which as well as the methods of pigeon-raising being the subjects of numerous treatises. A parallel drawn between the remains of Golubarda and the evidence provided by the treatises and the specialists in the architectural design of the European pigeon-houses shows that Golubarda had been built in conformity with the architectural pattern of loft construction 198 Anali Dubrovnik 43 (2005) which prevailed in the Mediterranean. According to its shape, Golubarda is datable to the late Middle Ages, but the dimensions of the cut stones, the quality of the facade mortar, in line with the preserved decorative elements of the consoles resemble the period of High Renaissance or the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Being erected at a strategic point which commanded the frontier with the Ottoman Empire, Golubarda also seems to have functioned as a watchtower in which pigeons were kept as messengers. Golubarda pigeon-house represents a unique example of specific commercial and industrial architecture of the Renaissance period, demonstrating the existence of a highly-developed culture in the Dubrovnik region of the time.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
7938
URI
Publication date:
23.5.2005.
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