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Church
of Bansko (Bulgaria) : tower and fortified outer walls pierced with
loopholes.
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A three meters
high massive curtain wall, built of stones inserted from place to place
in a plane tree structure (...). Two entrances barred with heavy oak doors,
defended by two loopholes disposed on each side to enfilade the street and
cross the fires. Inside, a high square tower with loopholes, too, situated
in such a way that from its top one can see the plain of the Mesta up to
a great distance and the gardens and orchards up to the forest and montain.
Situated in such a way that it dominates the network of neighbouring streets
and their habitations and permits, through the loopholre, to defend the
access to the two wall doors. In the middle, a vast and high stone building,
the church, bordered with a wooden galllery. This architectural complex
is unique in this part of the Balkans : each constitutive part and element
has a signiffication and most original meanings deposited here can be deciphered
today by means of most common cultural codes (...). Very strong reasons
must have presided to such a construction in the Otttoman timers. Many people
in Bulgarian still wonder at it. The Turkish regime forbid the construction
of buildings destined to worship use whose height exceeded that of ordinary
houses. It prohibited the erection of towers used as belfries, reserving
to mosque minarets the privilege of erecting high in the sky to signal a
Muslim settlement.
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