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Paper Model
Alte Wasserkunst Bautzen

Author: Lutz Pietschker
Version: 2010-12-31

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The ensemble of the Old Water-tower (1558) and St. Michael's Church (1634) is the landmark for the town of Bautzen in Saxonia. It is part of the old town fortifications and adjacent to the Spree river. The water-tower holds a museum of the town fortifications and displays some of the old machinery.

View of the original site
View of the original site (Image by André Wucht, published on the Bautzen Tourist Info website)

This model has been printed bilingual, in German and Sorbic (a slavic language still spoken in that part of Germany). I bought it in the museum shop in the Alte Wasserkunst itself for EUR 2,50- an unbeatable price. It is a rather simple child's model with a couple of design problems that would foil most children's attempts to ever complete it. Among the problems were an unstable construction (I had to add a base-plate), the most curious gluing tab system I ever saw and a few cases of imprecise design (non-fitting edges). But it is a charming model nonetheless, and I completed it during a holiday in Saxonia, so memories are attached to it.

Picture Gallery

(Click image to show it in full size in a new window.)

Side view, showing the side of the church. The background looks very similar to the sky on the day we visited Bautzen.
View from the Spree side, showing the water tower and the water. The base has been improvised by me and coloured with pencils because I had no other colours with me at the time. Immediately upstream of the tower is an oblique step in the river bed.
Seen from the gate house side. Note that in the model the lower third of the tower is missing, in reality the tower has a round base, and the cliffs are much higher. The designer decided to leave this completely out of the model. I tried to give a hint to the fact by the dark colouring around the tower and cliff base.
From the top you see that the tower's cap is ex-centric (as it is in reality). The wheel tracks through the gate and on the grass have been added by me.
Another side view on the ensemble. You can see a similar view of the original site at Wikimedia:


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, last change 2011-03-12