Medieval fortification refers to medieval military methods that cover the development of fortification construction and use in Europe, roughly from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Renaissance. During this millennium, fortifications changed warfare, and in turn were modified to suit new tactics, weapons and siege techniques.
Naarden is a city and former municipality in the Gooi region in the province of North Holland, Netherlands. It has been part of the new municipality of Gooise Meren since 2016.
A defensive wall is a fortification usually used to protect a city, town or other settlement from potential aggressors. The walls can range from simple palisades or earthworks to extensive military fortifications such as curtain walls with towers, bastions and gates for access to the city. From ancient to modern times, they were used to enclose settlements. Generally, these are referred to as city walls or town walls, although there were also walls, such as the Great Wall of China, Walls of Benin, Hadrian's Wall, Anastasian Wall, and the Atlantic Wall, which extended far beyond the borders of a city and were used to enclose regions or mark territorial boundaries. In mountainous terrain, defensive walls such as letzis were used in combination with castles to seal valleys from potential attack. Beyond their defensive utility, many walls also had important symbolic functions – representing the status and independence of the communities they embraced.
A fortification is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin fortis ("strong") and facere.
Fort Santiago, built in 1571, is a citadel or castle built by Spanish navigator and governor Miguel López de Legazpi for the newly established city of Manila in the Philippines. The defense fortress is located in Intramuros, the walled city of Manila.
Fort Monroe is a former military installation in Hampton, Virginia, at Old Point Comfort, the southern tip of the Virginia Peninsula, United States. It is currently managed by partnership between the Fort Monroe Authority for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the National Park Service, and the city of Hampton as the Fort Monroe National Monument. Along with Fort Wool, Fort Monroe originally guarded the navigation channel between the Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads—the natural roadstead at the confluence of the Elizabeth, the Nansemond and the James rivers.
A bastion fort or trace italienne is a fortification in a style that evolved during the early modern period of gunpowder when the cannon came to dominate the battlefield. It was first seen in the mid-fifteenth century in Italy. Some types, especially when combined with ravelins and other outworks, resembled the related star fort of the same era.
The existence of the earliest forts in India have been substantiated by documentation and excavation. In the medieval times, the architecture of the forts had both Hindu and Muslim influence. The forts constructed by the British initially opted for simple designs. The existing castles are continually modified and many of them are privately owned.
The Bastille is the name of a fortress culminating at 476 m (1,561ft) above sea level, located at the south end of the Chartreuse mountain range and overlooking the city of Grenoble, France. The Bastille, which also gives its name to the hill, is the main tourist site of the Grenoble area, with 600,000 visitors per year.
Fort National is a fort on a tidal island a few hundred metres off the walled city of Saint-Malo. The great military architect Vauban had it built in 1689 to protect Saint-Malo's port.
The walls of Amsterdam were built in the Middle Ages to protect the city against attack. The Medieval walls were replaced with a series of bastions in the 17th century. In the 19th century, the walls were torn down and replaced with the Defence Line of Amsterdam, a fortification line which encircled Amsterdam at a distance from the city.
Lascaris Battery, also known as Fort Lascaris or Lascaris Bastion, is an artillery battery located on the east side of Valletta, Malta. The battery was built by the British in 1854, and it is connected to the earlier St. Peter & Paul Bastion of the Valletta Land Front. In World War II, the Lascaris War Rooms were dug close to the battery, and they served as Britain's secret headquarters for the defence of the island.
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).
Theresia Bastion, named after the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, is the largest preserved piece of defensive wall of the Austrian-Hungarian fortress of Timișoara. It covers about 1.7 hectares of the city center. It was built between 1732 and 1734. Today it is used as a passage, but it also houses commercial spaces, restaurants, bars, a nightclub, a library and two permanent exhibitions of the National Museum of Banat, as well as the Ethnography department of the Banat Village Museum. The bastion is included on the list of historical monuments in Timiș County with LMI code TM-II-m-A-06103.03.
The roundel is an artillery fortification with a rounded or circular plan of a similar height to the adjacent defensive walls. If the fortification is clearly higher than the walls it is called a battery tower.
Nebet Tepe is one of the hills of Plovdiv where the ancient town was founded. The earliest settlements on Nebet Tepe are dated back to 4000 BC. The site was first settled by Thracians, later expanded by Philip II of Macedon and the Roman empire. As the town expanded, Nebet Tepe became the citadel of the town's acropolis. There are remains of the city's walls, towers, and a postern from the time of Justinian leading down to the Maritsa river. Today, the archaeological complex on the hill is one of the most popular tourist sights in Plovdiv and a cultural monument of national significance.
Timișoara Fortress is a historical fortress in western Romania around which the town of Timișoara was built.
A polygonal fort is a type of fortification originating in France in the late 18th century and fully developed in Germany in the first half of the 19th century. Unlike earlier forts, polygonal forts had no bastions, which had proved to be vulnerable. As part of ring fortresses, polygonal forts were generally arranged in a ring around the place they were intended to protect, so that each fort could support its neighbours. The concept of the polygonal fort proved to be adaptable to improvements in the artillery which might be used against them, and they continued to be built and rebuilt well into the 20th century.
The siege of Naarden took place from 6 to 13 September 1673 during the Franco-Dutch War of 1672 to 1678, when a Dutch army captured the Dutch fortress town of Naarden. Naarden had been occupied by the French since the previous year.
