At the end of the mole between Mandraki and Commercial harbours is Fort Saint Nicolas, built in 1460 and the major focus of attention during the first Turkish seige of 1480.
A walk around the moat sounds rather boring but isn't and give a real feel of the scale of the fortifications and their complexity with a succession of killing grounds for anyone getting this far.
For some strange reason you only get to walk on the walls themselves on Tuesdays and Saturdays so a second visit was need to see the view from the top. This shows the old wall (1480 siege) to the left, a new moat was cut to the right leaving a new advanced wall ready for the 1522 siege.
Finally the Grand Masters palace, the curse of scaffolding seems to follow me around. From the ground floor up it was reconstructed by the Italians in the 1930's
2 comments:
Very interesting. Thanks for that.
I enoyed walking around the moat. As you say, it gives a real feel for the scale of the defences. Lots of stone cannon balls/projectiles laying around the moat when I was there around 2003.
Also had a quick look at the WW2 wrecks in the industrial end of the harbour.
One thing I felt was a let down was many of the attractions has such poor signage and information on what the items were, their age their history etc. Has it improved?
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