by Joseph Gies
Almeria. Province of Granada, on the Mediterranean coast. Built by the Moors in the eighth century on the site of a Phoenician fortress; a great enclosure with square towers on top of a ridge; captured by the Christians in 1147, recaptured by the Muslims in 1157 and held by them until 1489; round towers added by Ferdinand and Isabella.
Baños de la Encina. Near Jaén, south central Spain. Castle built by the Moors in 967 to defend the Guadalquivir River; rectangular enclosure with square towers on a hilltop; captured in 1212 by the Christians, who built an extramural tower for an added defense.
Alcala de Guadaira. Province of Seville. Muslim castle, curtain walls with eight square towers, one defending the gate, and an extramural tower protecting the bridge leading to the gate; cross-walls dividing the attacking forces into separate sectors.
Gormaz. Castile. Built by the Muslims in the tenth century on top of a limestone rock, given to the famous hero-adventurer, the Cid, at the end of the eleventh century by Alfonso VI; two baileys, irregular plan, with square towers, curtain wall 30 feet high and 3,000 feet long.
Almodovar del Rio. Province of Cordoba. Muslim castle high on the banks of the Guadalquivir River, used as a treasure house in the fourteenth century by Peter the Cruel; has high, crenelated walls; an extramural tower 130 feet high is connected to the rest of the castle by a high stone bridge.
Calatrava la Nueva. Castile. Built by the military Order of Calatrava about 1216 on the site of an Arab castle; the main enclosure has an irregular octagonal shape and is surrounded by a moat; there is a second enclosure to protect livestock, an extramural tower, a great church with a rose window.
Zorita de los Canes. Province of Guadalajara. Castle originally built by the Muslims, conquered in 1085 by Alfonso VI, reconquered by the Arabs in the twelfth century, later taken over by the Order of Calatrava, who rebuilt it; on a mound overlooking the Tagus River; an outer curtain has powerful towers, the southern serving as a keep; an extramural tower on the northeast is connected to the castle by a solid Gothic arch; entrance to the castle is through an arched gateway protected by a gatehouse.
Consuegra. Province of Toledo. Built by the Hospitallers in the twelfth century and modeled after the Crusader castles of Syria; double-walled enceinte, central keep with round towers.
La Mota. Medina del Campo, north of Madrid. Built about 1440 on the ruins of a thirteenth-century castle; outer curtain wall with two galleries in its thickness, tall rectangular keep with four pairs of turrets at the corners, machicolations between; favorite residence of Columbus’ patroness Isabella, who died here in 1504; later her daughter Joanna the Mad was imprisoned here, as was Cesare Borgia (who managed to escape).
Peñafiel. North of Madrid. Built about 1450, following the contours of the top of an eminence above the Duero River; a long narrow enclosure with two lines of curtain walls strengthened by round towers, a square central tower-keep 112 feet high.
Alcazar. Segovia. Built by Alfonso VI late in the eleventh century, rebuilt in the 1350s; on a rocky eminence; the walls are strengthened with semicircular towers; there are two great square towers within the enclosure.
Coca. Northwest of Madrid. A brick castle built by Muslim workmen for the archbishop of Seville, Alfonso de Fonseca, in the fifteenth century; massive square double curtain walls are surrounded by a moat; the keep is an enlarged square tower of the inner enclosure guarding the entrance; the crenelations are decorated with distinctive rounded furrows; there are embrasures for cannon, square cross-and-orb gun loops, hexagonal projecting turrets from corner towers of external wall.
GERMANY AND AUSTRIA
An early German or Austrian castle was characterized by its inaccessible site, usually on top of a rocky height, and by its square central Bergfried, or tower; later many castles were built on level ground surrounded by moats. The greatest period of medieval castle-building in Germany was the era of the Hohenstaufens (1138-1254). Most of the famous “Castles on the Rhine” now exist either in ruins or in restorations.
Marksburg. On the Rhine. Built originally in the tenth century to collect tolls on the Rhine, enlarged in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, restored by Kaiser Wilhelm II; square central tower, residential quarters, series of gatehouses guarding approach to the upper castle.
Trifels. Rhenish Palatinate. Castle of the German emperors built in the eleventh century on top of a high eminence, expanded in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by the Hohenstaufens; here Richard the Lionhearted was kept prisoner in 1193 by Emperor Henry VI; 70-foot-high rectangular keep, chapel; castle almost wholly reconstructed. Ruins of two other castles, Anebos and Scharfenberg, are on nearby peaks.
Munzenberg. Hesse. Built 1174; elliptical enclosure on top of a mountain, with two round towers and a forward tower guarding the west approach; living quarters, chapel and kitchen along the inside of the curtain.
Wildenberg. Bavaria. Late twelfth century, rectangular enclosure on top of a mountain; square towers guarding the line of approach.
Eltz. On the Moselle. Begun by the counts of Eltz in 1157, mostly dating from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries; the oldest surviving structure is the Platteltz Tower (twelfth or thirteenth century), partly restored after a fire in the 1920s; nearby are the ruins of Trutzeltz, the castle of the archbishop of Trier who carried on a protracted feud with the counts of Eltz and finally compelled them to surrender.
Heidenreichstein. Austria. Built in the twelfth century; a square tower was added in the thirteenth century, a round tower later.
Rapottenstein. Austria. Built in the twelfth century on a rock outcropping; there are a round tower defending the approaches, a square tower higher up, and residential buildings.
Ortenberg. Bavaria. Early thirteenth century; three baileys, the inner and middle in a line, the outer bailey in front of both, with a rising approach; the enemy had to pass the length of the outer bailey under attack from the inner and middle ones, then up a flight of steps and through a barbican and three other gateways before the inner bailey was reached; a trapezoidal keep at the highest point is surrounded closely by the wall of the inner bailey.
Falkenberg. Bavaria. Built about 1290 on a huge natural pile of boulders overlooking the Waldnaab River; the curtain follows the contour of the rocks; the buildings of the castle are between the curtain and a small internal courtyard containing a square keep.
Hohensalzburg. Austria. Residence of the archbishop of Salzburg, built in the twelfth century on a rock 400 feet above the Salzach River; modeled after the Crusader castles, later enlarged and remodeled; massive curtain walls, round towers.
OTHER EUROPEAN CASTLES
Pfeffengen and Dornach. Switzerland. Two shell keeps of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries built within a few miles of each other; in both cases, the shell wall, instead of being built on top of the mound, is built against its vertical sides, containing the mound and rising high above it.
Chillon. Switzerland. Castle made famous by Byron’s poem; built in the thirteenth century on the site of a ninth-century castle, on a rocky island in a lake, reached by a bridge leading to a gatehouse; the curtain wall follows the contours of the rock, and the buildings of the castle are constructed around the inner court, with a square keep at the end farthest from the bridge.
Castle of the Counts of Flanders. Ghent. Built in 1180, on the site of an eleventh-century fortress, by Philip of Alsace on his return from Crusade, and modeled on the Crusader castles; on level ground, surrounded by a moat and high curtain walls with round towers; a rectangular keep has a lesser hall on the first floor, the great hall above.
Carrickfergus. Northern Ireland. Built on the shores of Belfast Loch, c. 1180-1205; square Norman keep joined to curtain walls.
Trim. Ireland. Built c. 1190-1200, the largest Anglo-Norman castle in Ireland; square keep with projecting wings, thirteenth-century curtain walls with round towers.
CRUSADER CASTLES
From a strictly military point of view, the castles built by the T
emplars, Hospitallers, and other Crusaders are incomparable. Drawing on European, Byzantine, and Muslim models and on their own experience, the Crusaders built strongholds of immense size and ingeniously related defenses in which small garrisons, supplied for as much as five years, could defy large armies.
Saone (Sahyun). Syria. The best-preserved Crusader castle, with a half mile of fortification in the shape of a rough isosceles triangle atop a mountain spur, the two long sides fronting on precipitous cliffs, the base on a 60-foot-wide, 90-foot-deep moat hewn out of the rock, a “needle” of the rock left to act as a bridge pier, with a drawspan to the postern; the square keep built against the curtain wall on the moat side.
Krak des Chevaliers. Syria. The giant “Citadel [Krak] of the Knights,” the most powerful and famous of the Crusader castles, almost as well preserved as Saone; begun early in the twelfth century and strengthened by the Hospitallers in 1142; two concentric walls enclose two baileys, an outer and an inner, the latter high on the spur of Gebel Alawi. Besieged at least twelve times, this castle “stuck like a bone in the throat of the Saracens,” in the words of a Muslim writer; in one siege, that of 1163, the Hospitallers not only held off the army of Nur-ed-Din but sallied out to surprise and defeat it; even in 1271, a lone outpost in a Muslim sea, its garrison down to 300 knights, the Krak held out until the Muslim general Baibars tricked the defenders with a forged order, after which he chivalrously gave the knights safe conduct to the coast.
Anamur. A seacoast castle in Turkey, with a huge fourteen-sided tower dominating the beach, and three baileys, one facing the land, one the sea, and a third on high ground between the two.
Chastel Pélérin (“Pilgrim Castle”). Israel. Built by the Templars in 1218 and well supplied with artillery and heavily garrisoned when the Muslims besieged it unsuccessfully in 1220, it was never taken, but was abandoned in 1291 after the fall of nearby Acre, and afterward badly damaged by Muslim engineers quarrying it to rebuild the city.
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CHAPTER I. The Castle Comes to England
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CHAPTER II. The Lord of the Castle
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CHAPTER III. The Castle as a House
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