Mural crown
A mural crown (
Usage in ancient times
Early appearances of the mural crown appear in the Achaemenid Empire, where they take on the appearance of crenelations on Mesopotamian and Persian buildings.
In Hellenistic culture, a mural crown identified tutelary deities such as the goddess Tyche (the embodiment of the fortunes of a city, familiar to Romans as Fortuna), and Hestia (the embodiment of the protection of a city, familiar to Romans as Vesta). The high cylindrical polos of Rhea/Cybele too could be rendered as a mural crown in Hellenistic times, specifically designating the mother goddess as patron of a city.[1]
The mural crown became an
The Graeco-Roman goddess
Heraldic use
The Roman military decoration was subsequently employed in European
Mural crowns were used, rather than royal crowns, for
In the early 20th century Portugal established strict rules for its municipal heraldry, in which each coat of arms contains a mural crown, with three silver towers signifying a village or an urban parish, four silver towers representing a town, five silver towers standing for a city and five gold towers for a capital city. The Portuguese rules are also applied to most municipal coats of arms of Brazil and some other members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Romanian municipal coats of arms contain a mural crown, with one or three towers for villages and communes, five and seven towers for towns and municipalities.
The eagle on the coat of arms of Austria wears a mural crown to signify its status as a republic. This is in contrast to the royal crowns that adorned the double-headed eagle (and the imperial crown positioned above it) in the coat of arms of Austria-Hungary until their defeat in World War I. The mural-crowned eagle was abandoned under the clerico-fascist Federal State of Austria from 1934, but was reinstated in Allied-occupied Austria following World War II and remains in place to this day.
Mural crowns of French heraldry: 1. Capital 2. Department Capital 3. Commune |
Mural crowns of Portuguese heraldry: 1. Village or urban parish 2. Town 3. City 4. Capital |
Mural crowns of Romanian heraldry: 1. Village 2. Town 3. City 4. Capital | |
Mural crowns of Brazil: 1. Village 2. Town 3. City 4. Capital |
Modern elaborations of mural crowns of Catalan heraldry | Mural crown of an Italian City | Mural crown of an Italian Comune |
Examples from heraldry
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Coat of arms of the Province of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain
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Coat of arms of Lisbon, capital of Portugal
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Coat of arms of Bissau, capital of Guinea-Bissau
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people's crown, marking Berlin's status as both a city and a state.
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Coat of arms of Sofia, capital of Bulgaria
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Coat of arms of Wellington, capital of New Zealand
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The coat of arms of the city of Milan, Italy
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The coat of arms of Morterone, the smallest Italian commune
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Coat of arms of the city ofState of São Paulo, Brazil
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The coat of arms of Trondheim, Norway
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The coat of arms of Arad, Romania (municipality, county capital)
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Thecoat of arms of Krasnoyarsk is topped with a form of mural crown, which is the golden five-tower coronet of rankof a Russian federal subject administrative centre.
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Coat of Arms of Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine
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Coat of arms of the City of Zrenjanin, Serbia
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Coat of arms of Ninove, Belgium
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Coat of arms of Calderdale, England
See also
- Camp crown
- Celestial crown
- Chaplet (headgear)
- Circlet
- Corolla (headgear)
- Naval crown
- Grass crown
- Civic crown
- Civic heraldry
- Crown
- Diadem
- Ferronnière
- Fillet (clothing)
- Laurel wreath
- Liangbatou
- Italia Turrita
- Kokoshnik
- National personification
- Polos
- Olive wreath
- Tainia (costume)
- The Stella d’Italia
- Tiara
- Vinok
- Wreath (attire)
References
- ^ The mural crown as an indicator of the personification of a city was thoroughly explored by: Allègre, Fernand (1889). Étude sur la déesse grecque Tyché (in French). Paris. pp. 187–92.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Aulus Gellius, Noctes Attici, V.6.4; Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, XXVI.48
- ISBN 978-0-520-04499-9. Archivedfrom the original on 3 April 2023. Retrieved 23 October 2016.
- ^ muri pinnis according to Aulus Gellius
- Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Augustus25.
- ^ Mellor, R., "The Goddess Roma" in Haase, W., Temporini, H., (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt, de Gruyter, 1991, pp 60–63.
- Viscount Beresford, and notes examples supporting the crest "to be seen over the arms of many of the British officers who distinguished themselves in the late war".
External links
- Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921. .