Gdansk Crane

Gdansk Crane – is one of the oldest water gates of Gdansk. It closes off Szeroka Street from the Motława River. It was designed simultaneously as a city gate and a harbor crane. On top of that, it was envisaged to perform defensive functions. This became the cause of a dispute with the Teutonic Knights, who did not want to see other fortified buildings near their castle. Eventually the gate-brane-fortress was erected over the objections of the Order in 1444 after only two years of construction. How massive the structure is is best demonstrated by the numbers – originally the building was 28 meters high (now 30) and 10 meters wide, and the thickness of the walls reached 4 meters in the ground level of the towers! The defensive nature of the gate-brane is also indicated by the small number of windows and shooting holes for firing heavy weapons (at the bottom) and light weapons (at the top). The wooden structure characteristic of this building, protruding in the direction of Dlugie Pobrzeze, the so-called bay window, is a cover for crane equipment, consisting of two pairs of hoisting wheels, the largest of which was 6.5 meters in diameter. They were used for handling goods weighing up to 2 tons and for setting sail on ships standing on the Motlawa River. The Gdansk Crane was the largest harbor crane in Europe in the Middle Ages.
The Crane’s military importance declined in the early 17th century, and by the 19th century it had only ancillary functions as a harbor device – it was still used for some time to lift the sterns of ships during their maintenance. The building was adapted for residential purposes. As a result of warfare, it was destroyed. The wooden bay window burned down, and most of the walls were blown up. It was rebuilt in the 1950s, referring to the appearance known from the 1601 illustration. It now houses a branch of the National Maritime Museum. Among other things, the crane mechanism is open to the public.