Medieval towns with grid plan and central market place in East-Central Europe: Origins and diffusion in the Early-Thirteenth Century

In east-central Europe the ealiest new towns of the grid model with a central square originated before 1200 in the Austrian border zone with Hungary. Their precursors seem to have been military border towns of the borgo-novo type in northern Italy, from where the model (without a central square) was borrowed by Duke Heinrich von Modling on his tour through Italy as a companion of Emperor Heinrich VI. Wiener Neustadt, the earliest Austrian example, has been studied in detail using a metrological analysis of its layout. Parallels to the measures of the layout of the borghi novi are part of the proof of the transfer. During the early-thirteenth century, the Neustadt model was applied in new towns all along the Austrian border. When Prince Ottokar II of Bohemia became Duke of Austria, he continued to found towns using this model and, when he took over the kingdom of Bohemia, he introduced the grid town in the perfect chequerboard version to his royal towns.