Conference

The Green Horseshoe: Urban Planning, Architecture, and the Multinational Fabric of Zagreb’s Ring

Dragan Damjanović, PhD, full professor

Art History Department
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,
University of Zagreb, Croatia
ddamjano@m.ffzg.hr

The urban development of Zagreb in the second half of the 19^th, and at the beginning of the 20^th centuries, at a time when this city was developing as the political capital of the Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, a semi-autonomous province in the eastern, Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, was marked by the formation of the Lower Town. At the heart of this newly conceived urban district, a sequence of seven interconnected squares and parks, known as the Green Horseshoe due to its characteristic layout, was established. This ensemble constitutes the most significant example of nineteenth-century urban planning in Croatia.

According to the first urban plan of Zagreb from 1865, which laid the foundations for the formation of the Lower Town, the Green Horseshoe was still not foreseen. Its idea began to take shape in 1882, and it was finally included in the new urban plan of Zagreb from 1887, whose authors were city engineers Rupert Melkus and Adolf Hudovski.

Undoubtedly influenced by the urban design of the Vienna Ring, but developed on an empty, unbuilt area, the plan from 1887 envisaged the construction of a series of solitary, free-standing public buildings in the centres of Green Horseshoe squares and parks, while partly residential and partly public buildings would be located on its edges.

The public buildings erected within and along the Green Horseshoe accommodated the principal newly established national institutions: the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts with the Archaeological Department of the National Museum and the Strossmayer Gallery, Matica hrvatska, the Art Pavilion, the University of Zagreb with its various institutes, the National and the University Library and State Archives, the Museum of Arts and Crafts, the Trade and Crafts Museum, the Croatian National Theatre, the Kolo and Sokol societies, etc. The administrative edifices of autonomous Croatian authorities, such as the Royal High Court and the Royal Forest Service, as well as buildings housing institutions directly administered from Budapest, including the Railway Administration and the Post Office, were likewise constructed in this area. The majority of the buildings, however, were commissioned by private investors, members of the Zagreb bourgeoisie of diverse religious and national backgrounds. Consequently, the area stands as a testimony to the multiethnic and multiconfessional composition of Zagreb’s population at the close of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

This paper contends that the Green Horseshoe constitutes an outstanding example of the fin-de-siècle Central European approach to urban design. Owing to the circumstance that the area was spared the devastations of the twentieth century, it has remained a uniquely preserved urban ensemble of the periphery of the Habsburg Empire.

Expansion of a Fortress City: The Case of Olomouc

Michael Viktořík, Ph.D.

Department of History
Palacký-University Olomouc
Michael.Viktorik@upol.cz

During the 19th century, Olomouc served as the most significant fortress in the Bohemian Lands. While other fortress cities (such as Hradec Králové or Brno) clearly trended toward opening and expansion during the third quarter of the 19th century, Olomouc followed a different trajectory. Between the 1850s and 1870s, substantial investments were made into modernizing local defenses; the existing bastion fortification was reinforced by an outer ring of detached forts. In the context of the Czech Republic, this fortress system originally called „verschanztes Lager“ is unique, bearing similarities to systems in Krakow or Verona.

In the late 1860s, the first voices emerged calling for the abolition of Olomouc’s fortress status, particularly targeting demolition reverses and construction bans. These demands gained momentum among residents who observed Olomouc lagging behind neighboring cities that were developing dynamically. Due to the lack of space for construction and industry, the city stagnated demographically and significantly lost its standing and prestige, especially in comparison to Brno.

Although these calls were not initially heeded in the 1870s, military authorities eventually permitted the gradual liquidation of the fortress gates. The city’s inadequate infrastructure had become insufficient even for the army’s needs, leading to the accepted degradation of the bastion fortifications. The official abolition of fortified cities status did not occur until the late 1880s. By that time, the first regulatory plans for urban expansion and construction on former military lands had already been drafted. However, were they ever realized in their original form?

This paper analyzes the factors influencing the process of urban expansion of Olomouc in the final decade of the 19th century. Simultaneously, it compares the specific development of Olomouc with other former fortress cities in Bohemia and Moravia Attention is also given to the question of the Olomouc ring road (Ringstrasse), the implementation of which fell far short of expectations.

Beyond the Carpathians: Ring Boulevards and Urban Modernity in the Romanian Old Kingdom

Gruia Bădescu, PhD

Research Fellow, Zukunftskolleg
Department of History and Sociology
University of Konstanz
gruia.badescu@uni-konstanz.de

This paper examines the emergence of circular roads and boulevards in the Vechiul Regat (Old Kingdom of Romania) during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, placing them in dialogue with the Viennese model.

It shows how these urban projects followed a trajectory distinct from the well-known paradigm of Vienna’s Ringstrasse. Whereas the Viennese Ring was created through the demolition of medieval fortifications and the monumental rearticulation of imperial space, several cities of the Romanian Kingdom developed circular roads largely without a preceding system of walls. Instead, they were embedded in processes of commercial expansion and circulation planning, in a country where urban modernization otherwise unfolded under the strong influence of the Parisian model, diffused outward from Bucharest’s own transformation.

While boulevards lined with representative and monumental architecture were built across the Kingdom, circular roads appeared more frequently in Wallachia than in Moldavia. The paper focuses on three cases. The first examines one of the few cities that did possess fortifications, Brăila, which passed from Ottoman control to Wallachia in 1829. Analysing the Kisseleff plans and subsequent boulevard construction in comparison with later Viennese interventions, the paper shows that circularity here emerged less from the removal of defenses than from logistical and mercantile rationality in a rapidly internationalizing Danubian port.

The second case considers projects for circular boulevards in Bucharest, including the partially realized central ring linking Piața Victoriei to Dristor, which sought to rationalize movement across an expanding capital whose urban fabric had never been structured by fortifications. In a city where representational architecture concentrated along the east–west boulevards and the remade Calea Victoriei, this central ring assumed primarily infrastructural functions: enhancing mobility and inscribing metropolitan coherence rather than staging a continuous representational façade comparable to Vienna. Third, the paper discusses the interwar Hesselman–Carada plan in Craiova, examining further attempts to deploy circular circulation as a developmental framework for structuring access, land subdivision, and modernization in a regional administrative centre. The chronology of this case also raises the question of how planning debates in the former Austro-Hungarian regions after 1920 may have influenced it, pointing to possible processes of transfer.

Throughout, the paper draws comparisons with Vienna while tracing the genealogy of these Wallachian circular boulevards and interrogating the limits of Ringstrasse influence beyond the Carpathians. It highlights their locally grounded planning logic, through which a semi-peripheral state sought to organize growth and facilitate commerce, within a broader project to symbolically participate in European urban modernity.

The Ring Boulevards of Timișoara and their Aesthetic Role

Deodath Zuh

University of Obuda
Ybl Miklos Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering
deodath.zuh@googlemail.com

The issue of ring boulevards is important not only because it highlights a fundamental urban element of a more easily navigable, rational, and healthier city. Nor does it merely create an urban planning device that connects neighborhoods of better and worse reputation, symbolically seating the middle, upper-middle, and lower classes at the same “round table” as equals. In the case of Timișoara, what becomes evident is that the curved boulevard and semicircular urban forms possess an early environmental-psychological function.

Curved streets are more pleasant and enjoyable to look at than straight ones, radial routes, or grid-like structures. Peculiarly, the semicircular roads and streets of fin-de-siècle Timișoara’s urban development plan illustrate this modern psychological idea. An analogous concept appears prominently in the then-contemporary works of Camillo Sitte. Streets should therefore be designed in a ring-like structure not only as a form of social reform and reconciliation. But in the hope that residents may engage in a dialogue with their built environment through the raw perception of what encircles them. Evidently, this dialogue has to be facilitated in a different way than how it was formerly vehicled.

Ring Logic Without a Ring: Imperial Spatial Strategy and the Reimagining of Sarajevo under the Austro-Hungarian Governance (1878-1918)

Andrea Baotić-Rustanbegović

Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo
baotic_2@hotmail.com

The processes of modernization that transformed European metropolises during the nineteenth century, most visibly manifested in architectural and urban change, constituted an important component of the “civilizing mission” pursued by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in Bosnia and Herzegovina following its occupation in 1878. This is particularly evident in the transformation of Sarajevo, the provincial capital, which over the subsequent four decades evolved from an Ottoman town into a modern administrative and commercial center resembling those of Central European cities. Owing to extensive construction activity, regulated and improved in accordance with contemporary planning standards, as well as the emergence of new architectural typologies and styles, Sarajevo is often described as having been developed according to the model of Vienna’s Ringstrasse.

Unlike the capital of the Monarchy, however, as well as other major cities such as Budapest or Brno, Sarajevo did not possess a medieval fortification surrounding its historic core whose demolition could give rise to a representative ring boulevard. Rather, due to its geographical position within a narrow valley along the Miljacka River, the city expanded and developed linearly from east to west. Moreover, the existing urban configuration and complex property relations resulted in a pattern of smaller, piecemeal interventions.

In this context, the paper examines how the Austro-Hungarian administration redefined Sarajevo’s urban identity by establishing a Central European civic core alongside the Ottoman town. It argues that architectural forms and planning concepts introduced from the imperial center were adapted to complex local circumstances, including the political context and prevailing socio-economic conditions. Particular attention is given to urban interventions and spatial strategies, such as the regulation and widening of streets, the postioning of key administrative and cultural buildings, the introduction of a tramway line and the regulation of the Miljacka riverbank, as they contributed to the emergence of urban axes functioning as boulevard-type streets. In this respect, the paper discusses former Appel Quai and Čemaluša street, as well as the commercial promenades of Ferhadija, Rudolf, and Franz Joseph streets, for they not only connected the historic city center with newly developed districts, but also assumed an important urban-structural and ceremonial role in Sarajevo under the Austro-Hungarian rule.

Žilina boulevards

Dušan Mellner independent researcher

The year 1870 is associated with the launch of the Košice-Bohumín railway in Žilina and witnessed the most dynamic development of the city in Upper Hungary. The subsequent construction of the Považská Railway, industrial factories, new city districts, and urbanization brought not only positive growth, but also subsequent problems related to the growing population. In 1869, Žilina had 2,870 inhabitants, in 1910 already 9,166, in 1930 the number grew to 21,283, and in 1969 to 54,503 inhabitants. Partial solutions were offered by new land readjustment plans and the first regulatory plan in 1908. The author of the proposal was probably the architect Pogány. He only dealt with the core of the city – the historic square and its surroundings. Unfortunately, it was not sufficient in view of the rapid growth of the city. Žilina did not have a proper regulatory plan until 1914–1915, which applied only to the inner city and nearby suburbs. The proposal partially addressed the development around the historic core, bordered by the Veľká okružná ring road.

However, the situation led to a restricted competition for a regulatory (spatial) plan for the entire city. The urban planning competition was won by a proposal from J. Peňáz, who best understood the topography and identity of Žilina. It was a concept of radial ring roads and boulevards, which relieved traffic and created potential for the development of the urban settlement. The design concept was based on the concentric shape of the city combined with a linear city, where the Rajčianka River valley naturally provided space. A linear city model with a main pedestrian zone – Boulevard connected to ring roads – was used. The solution included the following functions: recreation (park), housing, river flow, green belts, industrial zone, transport corridor – railway, road. The resulting boulevards created the focal point of the city’s identity.