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Watchtower
A watchtower or watch tower is a type of fortification used in many parts of the world. It differs from a regular tower in that its primary use is military and from a turret in that it is usually a freestanding structure. Its main purpose is to provide a high, safe place from which a sentinel or guard may observe the surrounding area. In some cases, non-military towers, such as religious towers, may also be used as watchtowers. History Military watchtowers The Romans built numerous towers as part of a system of communications, one example being the towers along Hadrian's Wall in Britain. Romans built many lighthouses, such as the Tower of Hercules in northern Spain, which survives to this day as a working building, and the equally famous lighthouse at Dover Castle, which survives to about half its original height as a ruin. In medieval Europe, many castles and manor houses, or similar fortified buildings, were equipped with watchtowers. In some of the manor houses of wes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fortification
A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ("to make"). From very early history to modern times, defensive walls have often been necessary for cities to survive in an ever-changing world of invasion and conquest. Some settlements in the Indus Valley civilization were the first small cities to be fortified. In ancient Greece, large stone walls had been built in Mycenaean Greece, such as the ancient site of Mycenae (famous for the huge stone blocks of its ' cyclopean' walls). A Greek '' phrourion'' was a fortified collection of buildings used as a military garrison, and is the equivalent of the Roman castellum or English fortress. These constructions mainly served the purpose of a watch tower, to guard certain roads, passes, and borders. Though smaller than a real fortress, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tower
A tower is a tall structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting structures. Towers are specifically distinguished from buildings in that they are built not to be habitable but to serve other functions using the height of the tower. For example, the height of a clock tower improves the visibility of the clock, and the height of a tower in a fortified building such as a castle increases the visibility of the surroundings for defensive purposes. Towers may also be built for observation, leisure, or telecommunication purposes. A tower can stand alone or be supported by adjacent buildings, or it may be a feature on top of a larger structure or building. Etymology Old English ''torr'' is from Latin ''turris'' via Old French ''tor''. The Latin term together with Greek τύρσις was loaned from a pre-Indo-European Mediterranean languag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guard Tower
A guard tower is any military tower used for guarding an area. These towers are usually operated by military personnel, and are structures built in areas of established control. These include military bases and cities occupied by military forces. This type of fortification is a variation on the tower incorporated into the walls of castles from history, and are, in the modern day, equipped with such facilities as heavier weapons than those carried by infantry and searchlights. Notable guard towers *Alcatraz guard towers * Auschwitz II guard towers *Tower of London * Yuma Territorial Prison 1876 guard tower. Gallery File:HollidayUnitHuntsvilleTX.jpg, A guard tower at the C.A. Holliday Unit of a state prison in Huntsville, Texas See also *Guardhouse A guardhouse (also known as a watch house, guard building, guard booth, guard shack, security booth, security building, or sentry building) is a building used to house personnel and security equipment. Guardhouses have histor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qasaba
A kasbah (, also ; ar, قَـصَـبَـة, qaṣaba, lit=fortress, , Maghrebi Arabic: ), also spelled qasba, qasaba, or casbah, is a fortress, most commonly the citadel or fortified quarter of a city. It is also equivalent to the term ''alcazaba'' in Spanish (), which derives from the same Arabic word. By extension, the term can also refer to a medina quarter, particularly in Algeria. In various languages, the Arabic word, or local words borrowed from the Arabic word, can also refer to a settlement, a fort, a watchtower, or a blockhouse. Citadel or fortress The term ''qasaba'' was historically flexible but it essentially denotes a fortress, commonly a citadel that protects a city or settlement area, or that serves as the administrative center. A kasbah citadel typically housed the military garrison and other privileged buildings such as a palace, along with other amenities such as a mosque and a hammam (bathhouse). Some kasbahs are built in a strategic elevated positio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chemin De Ronde Muraille Long
Chemin or Le Chemin may refer to: Arts and media * ''Le chemin'' (Emmanuel Moire album), 2013 album by French singer Emmanuel Moire * ''Le chemin'' (Kyo album), 2003 album by French band Kyo ** "Le Chemin" (song), title song from same-titled Kyo album *''Le Chemin de France'' (English ''The Flight to France''), an 1887 adventure novel by Jules Verne Places * Chemin, Jura, France * Chemin, Valais, Switzerland * Le Chemin, France, commune in the Marne department in the Champagne-Ardenne region in north-eastern France People with surname Chemin * Ariane Chemin (born 1962), French journalist * Jean-Yves Chemin (born 1959), French mathematician Other uses * CheMin, short for Chemistry and Mineralogy, an instrument located in the interior of the Curiosity rover, that is exploring the surface of Gale crater on Mars See also *Chemin de fer (other) Chemin de fer is a French phrase meaning "railway" or "railroad". Literally, "iron path." Chemin de fer may refer to: Arts, e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malta Ghallis One
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies south of Sicily (Italy), east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The official languages are Maltese and English, and 66% of the current Maltese population is at least conversational in the Italian language. Malta has been inhabited since approximately 5900 BC. Its location in the centre of the Mediterranean has historically given it great strategic importance as a naval base, with a succession of powers having contested and ruled the islands, including the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, Knights of St. John, French, and British, amongst others. With a population of about 516,000 over an area of , Malta is the world's tenth-smallest country in area and fourth most densely populated sovereign cou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Najd
Najd ( ar, نَجْدٌ, ), or the Nejd, forms the geographic center of Saudi Arabia, accounting for about a third of the country's modern population and, since the Emirate of Diriyah, acting as the base for all unification campaigns by the House of Saud to bring Arabia under a single polity and under the Salafi jurisprudence. Historic Najd was divided into three modern administrative regions still in use today. The Riyadh region, featuring Wadi Hanifa and the Tuwaiq escarpment, which houses easterly Yamama with the Saudi capital, Riyadh since 1824, and the Sudairi region, which has its capital in Majmaah. The second administrative unit, Al-Qassim, houses the fertile oases and date palm orchards spread out in the region's highlands along Wadi Rummah in central Najd with its capital in Buraidah, the second largest Najdi city, with the region historically contested by the House of Rashid to its north and the House of Saud to its east and south. The third administrative ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peel Towers
Peel towers (also spelt pele) are small fortified keeps or tower houses, built along the English and Scottish borders in the Scottish Marches and North of England, mainly between the mid-14th century and about 1600. They were free-standing with defence being a prime consideration of their design with "confirmation of status and prestige" also playing a role. They also functioned as watch towers where signal fires could be lit by the garrison to warn of approaching danger. The FISH Vocabulary ''Monument Types Thesaurus'' lists "pele" alongside " bastle", "fortified manor house" and "tower house" under the broader term "fortified house". Pevsner defines a peel as simply a stone tower. Outside of this, "peel" or "pele" can also be used in related contexts, for example a "pele" or "barmkin" (in Ireland a bawn) was an enclosure where livestock were herded in times of danger. The rustling of livestock was an inevitable part of Border raids, and often their main purpose. In t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keep
A keep (from the Middle English ''kype'') is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars have debated the scope of the word ''keep'', but usually consider it to refer to large towers in castles that were fortified residences, used as a refuge of last resort should the rest of the castle fall to an adversary. The first keeps were made of timber and formed a key part of the motte-and-bailey castles that emerged in Normandy and Anjou during the 10th century; the design spread to England, south Italy and Sicily. As a result of the Norman invasion of 1066, use spread into Wales during the second half of the 11th century and into Ireland in the 1170s. The Anglo-Normans and French rulers began to build stone keeps during the 10th and 11th centuries; these included Norman keeps, with a square or rectangular design, and circular shell keeps. Stone keeps carried considerable political as well as military importance and could tak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tower House
A tower house is a particular type of stone structure, built for defensive purposes as well as habitation. Tower houses began to appear in the Middle Ages, especially in mountainous or limited access areas, in order to command and defend strategic points with reduced forces. At the same time, they were also used as an aristocrat's residence, around which a castle town was often constructed. Europe After their initial appearance in Ireland, Scotland, the Frisian lands, Basque Country and England during the High Middle Ages, tower houses were also built in other parts of western Europe, especially in parts of France and Italy. In Italian medieval communes, urban ''palazzi'' with a very tall tower were increasingly built by the local highly competitive patrician families as power centres during times of internal strife. Most north Italian cities had a number of these by the end of the Middles Ages, but few now remain, notably two towers in Bologna, twenty towers in Pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Balearic Islands
The Balearic Islands ( ca, Illes Balears ; es, Islas Baleares or ) are an archipelago in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The archipelago forms a Provinces of Spain, province and Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Spain, with Palma de Mallorca being its capital and largest city. Formerly part of the Kingdom of Majorca, Kingdom of Mallorca, the islands were made a province in the 19th century provincial division, which in 1983 received a Statute of Autonomy of the Balearic Islands, Statute of Autonomy. In its later reform of 2007, the Statute designates the Balearic Islands as one of the ''nationalities and regions of Spain, nationalities'' of Spain. The official Languages of Spain, languages of the Balearic Islands are Catalan language, Catalan and Spanish language, Spanish. The archipelago islands are further grouped in western Pityusic Islands, Pytiuses (the largest being Ibiza and Formentera), and east ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical region. Italy is also considered part of Western Europe, and shares land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and the enclaved microstates of Vatican City and San Marino. It has a territorial exclave in Switzerland, Campione. Italy covers an area of , with a population of over 60 million. It is the third-most populous member state of the European Union, the sixth-most populous country in Europe, and the tenth-largest country in the continent by land area. Italy's capital and largest city is Rome. Italy was the native place of many civilizations such as the Italic peoples and the Etruscans, while due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, the country has also historically b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
