Kamień podkrakowskich budowli romańskich

Three objects were studied within a project aimed at investigation of stones used in the Romanesque edifices in the vicinity of Kraków, and continued since 2019. These are the churches in Dziekanowice (21 km SE of Kraków) and in Czchów (58 km SE of Kraków), and a clergy house in Morawica (13 W of the Kraków city centre). The church in Dziekanowice is relatively completely and well preserved, while the only Romanesque remnants of the church in Czchów are those reused in the Gothic church. It is a clergy house in Morawica (a former castle), whose walls contain Romanesque fragments. Two former edifices are built of the Istebna sandstone (Upper Cretaceous-Paleogene), quarried from the local flysch bedrock. Fine-grained, grey-yellowish stone dominates. It is soft and easily workable due to argillaceous binder (matrix). The stone blocks are precisely shaped and well fitted. Romanesque remnants of the clergy house in Morawica are con- structed predominantly of limestone, also of local origin. Only a fragment of the NW wall is built of the Istebna sandstone. This fragment is probably a part of the butress supporting the NW wall. The study shows that stonemasons and builders of that time had good skills of selecting and applying proper stone blocks for particular purposes. Blocks used in load-bearing structures were exceptionally well shaped and fitted. On the other hand, those skills varied. The frieze from the Romanesque church in Czchów is rather primitive. The size of limestone blocks used in the clergy house in Morawica is strikingly similar to those of various Romanesque edifices in Kraków. It seems, therefore, that those blocks could have been quarried and shaped in quarries located in the city, where the masonry “industry” was well developed. Larger, irregular blocks, used as foundations and filler in the “opus emplectum” type walls were probably quarried on site. Moreover, stones used in more eminent edifices (churches, castles) were probably more carefully selected. The Morawica castle (clergy house) and many churches in Kraków were built of limestone blocks without cherts.