| Chavonnes battery | |
|---|---|
 The interior of the museum | |
| Location | Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, Cape Town, South Africa |
| Coordinates | 33°54′26″S18°25′17″E / 33.90722°S 18.42139°E |
| Built | 1714–1725 |
| Built for | Dutch East India Company |
  Location of Chavonnes battery in Cape Town | |
The Chavonnes Battery was a fortification protecting Cape Town, South Africa, built in the early 18th century. It is now a museum and function venue.
The battery was one of the coastal fortifications of the Cape Peninsula linked to the Castle of Good Hope. [1] It was built in 1714–1725 by the Dutch East India Company, [2] and named after its originator, Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes, who was the governor of the Cape Colony.
The battery was built in a “U” shape with a stone wall built on a rocky outcrop on the Western flank at the waters edge. [3] It had 16 mounted guns with an arc of fire of nearly 180 degrees. [4] The battery also served as a prison and a quarantine and convalescent wing of the old Somerset Hospital. [5] [6]
It was used to protect the bay and town until 1861 when construction work started on the Alfred basin and some of the stone and rubble from the site was used to create a breakwater. Further damage occurred when coal bunkers and later a fish factory were built over the site. [7]
In the 1990s, during the development of the Clock Tower Precinct at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront and the construction of an office building for the BoE Stockbrokers group and Nedbank much of the battery was excavated by archaeologists from the University of Cape Town, and has now been opened as a visitor attraction that includes a museum, hosts contemporary art exhibitions, offers guided tours, venue hire and cannon firing.
The museum includes the excavated walls, well and other components of part of the battery, with displays on cannons and the equipment needed to maintain and fire them and information boards related to the history of Cape Town. [8]
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The North Bastion, formerly the Baluarte San Pablo was part of the fortifications of Gibraltar, in the north of the peninsula, protecting the town against attack from the mainland of Spain. The bastion was based on the older Giralda tower, built in 1309. The bastion, with a mole that extended into the Bay of Gibraltar to the west and a curtain wall stretching to the Rock of Gibraltar on its east, was a key element in the defenses of the peninsula. After the British took Gibraltar in 1704 they further strengthened these fortifications, flooding the land in front and turning the curtain wall into the Grand Battery.
The Gibraltar peninsula, located at the far southern end of Iberia, has great strategic importance as a result of its position by the Strait of Gibraltar where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. It has repeatedly been contested between European and North African powers and has endured fourteen sieges since it was first settled in the 11th century. The peninsula's occupants – Moors, Spanish, and British – have built successive layers of fortifications and defences including walls, bastions, casemates, gun batteries, magazines, tunnels and galleries. At their peak in 1865, the fortifications housed around 681 guns mounted in 110 batteries and positions, guarding all land and sea approaches to Gibraltar. The fortifications continued to be in military use until as late as the 1970s and by the time tunnelling ceased in the late 1960s, over 34 miles (55 km) of galleries had been dug in an area of only 2.6 square miles (6.7 km2).
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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Cape Town:
The Amsterdam Battery was the most important of the military installations built by the Dutch East India Company to protect Table Bay. It marked the beginning of coastal defense in South Africa.
The Nagasaki Battery Sites were a group of 23 coastal artillery batteries erected to protect the port of Nagasaki in what is now Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu Japan during the Edo Period Tokugawa shogunate. The ruins one of these sites was designated a National Historic Site in 1986 with the additional sites added to the designation in 2014 and 2020.
