The granary tower at the Castle Seeberg

Trip type: By car

Distance from KV: 52 km

Granary towers are the oldest preserved structures of folk architecture in the region of Cheb. The timbered granaries with several floors, each of them being always wider by a beam, with  saddle roofs and half-timbered gables are already known from Albrecht Dürer´s engravings. The way they were built as well as their layout protects them against bad weather and thieves. Being provided with ventilation windows which prevent birds from getting in, they resembled fortress towers and used to be the symbols of their owners’ wealth which everyone could see.

Lots of granary towers used to be in the neighbourhood of Cheb. Unfortunately, only two of them have been preserved until these days. The oldest of them which dates from 1714 used to stand in Kopanina and then, in 1988 it was moved to the Soos state nature reserve near Františkovy Lázně. The three-year-younger granary from nearby Mlýnek is a part of the ethnographic exhibition at the Seeberg castle today.

And you can find another structure typical of a farmhouse from the region of Cheb. There is a pigeon loft with a carved balustrade on the gallery and a peaked roof standing on two high columns in front of the granary tower. It resembles a circus tent a bit.

 Source: www.promenada.cz