A report on Castle and Curtain wall (fortification)

Dating back to the early 12th century, the Alcázar of Segovia is one of the most distinctive castles in Europe.
Beaumaris Castle in Anglesey in North Wales, with curtain walls between the lower outer towers, and higher inner curtain walls between the higher inner towers.
Built in 1385, Bodiam Castle in East Sussex, England, is surrounded by a water-filled moat.
Reconstruction of the 9th-century BC defensive walls around ancient Tel Lachish in modern Israel.
The Norman White Tower, the keep of the Tower of London, exemplifies all uses of a castle including city defence, a residence, and a place of refuge in times of crisis.
The 12th-century curtain wall of the Château de Fougères in Brittany in northern France, showing the battlements, arrowslits and overhanging machicolations.
Windsor Castle in England was founded as a fortification during the Norman Conquest and today is one of the principal official residences of Queen Elizabeth II.
Two sections of the 16th-century curtain wall around Berwick-upon-Tweed, at the eastern end of the Anglo-Scottish border.
Baba Vida medieval castle build on the banks of the Danube in Vidin, Bulgaria
São Jorge Castle in Lisbon, Portugal, with a bridge over a moat
The wooden palisades on top of mottes were often later replaced with stone, as in this example at Château de Gisors in France.
A courtyard of the 14th-century Raseborg Castle in Finland
The 14th-century keep of Château de Vincennes near Paris towers above the castle's curtain wall. The wall exhibits features common to castle architecture: a gatehouse, corner towers, and machicolations.
Beaumaris Castle in Anglesey, North Wales, with curtain walls between the lower outer towers, and higher inner curtain walls between the higher inner towers.
A 13th-century gatehouse in the château de Châteaubriant, France. It connects the upper ward to the lower one.
Caerlaverock Castle in Scotland is surrounded by a moat.
Daorson, Bosnia, built around a prehistoric central fortified settlement or acropolis (existed there cca. 17/16th c. to the end of the Bronze Age, cca. 9/8th c. BCE), surrounded by cyclopean walls (similar to Mycenae) dated to the 4th c. BCE.
Borġ in-Nadur fort in Malta, built during the Tarxien phase and used until the Bronze Age.
The Bayeux Tapestry contains one of the earliest representations of a castle. It depicts attackers of the Château de Dinan in France using fire, a major threat to wooden castles.
Built in 1138, Castle Rising in Norfolk, England is an example of an elaborate donjon.
Albarrana tower in Paderne Castle, Portugal
The gatehouse to the inner ward of Beeston Castle in Cheshire, England, was built in the 1220s, and has an entrance between two D-shaped towers.
Krak des Chevaliers in Syria is a concentric castle built with both rectangular and rounded towers. It is one of the best-preserved Crusader castles.
The design of Edward I's Harlech Castle (built in the 1280s) in North Wales was influenced by his experience of the Crusades.
The northern walls of the Gran Castello in Gozo, Malta, were built in the 15th century.
Corvin Castle in Transylvania (built between 1446 and 1480) was one of the biggest in Eastern Europe at that time.
Castle De Haar, Utrecht, Netherlands.
The angled bastion, as used in Copertino Castle in Italy, was developed around 1500. First used in Italy, it allowed the evolution of artillery forts that eventually took over the military role of castles.
Neuschwanstein is a 19th-century historicist (neoromanesque) castle built by Ludwig II of Bavaria, inspired by the romanticism of the time.
Castello Dei Baroni, a country residence in Wardija, Malta, designed with castle-like features.
A 19th-century depiction by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc of the construction of the large tower at Coucy Castle in France, with scaffolding and masons at work. The putlog holes mark the position of the scaffolding in earlier stages of construction. The tower was blown up in 1917.
Experimental archeology castle building at Guédelon Castle site in France (2015).
God Speed! by Edmund Blair Leighton, 1900: a late Victorian view of a lady giving a favour to a knight about to do battle.
Highland castles such as Château de Montségur in southern France have become the popular idea of where castles should be found because they are photogenic, where in reality castles were built in a variety of places due to a range of considerations.
Srebrenik Fortress in Srebrenik, Bosnia: inaccessibility of location with only a narrow bridge traversing deep canyon provides excellent protection.
Almourol Castle in Portugal, which stands on a small islet in the Tejo River.
Tavastia Castle in Hämeenlinna, Finland, one of the northernmost castles in Europe. The exact date of construction of the castle is unclear, as far as it is known to have been built in the late 13th century, but the first mention of it in contemporary documents is from 1308. It was built close to Lake Vanajavesi.
An early 13th-century drawing by Matthew Paris showing contemporary warfare, including the use of castles (here Lincoln Castle), crossbowmen and mounted knights.
A reconstructed trebuchet at Château des Baux in Bouches-du-Rhône in the south of France.

A curtain wall is a defensive wall between two fortified towers or bastions of a castle, fortress, or town.

- Curtain wall (fortification)

Over the approximately 900 years that castles were built, they took on a great many forms with many different features, although some, such as curtain walls, arrowslits, and portcullises, were commonplace.

- Castle
Dating back to the early 12th century, the Alcázar of Segovia is one of the most distinctive castles in Europe.

2 related topics with Alpha

Overall
Inside of an arrowslit, where an archer would stand, at Corfe Castle.

Arrowslit

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Narrow vertical aperture in a fortification through which an archer can launch arrows or a crossbowman can launch bolts.

Narrow vertical aperture in a fortification through which an archer can launch arrows or a crossbowman can launch bolts.

Inside of an arrowslit, where an archer would stand, at Corfe Castle.
Exterior view of arrowslits in the Bargate gatehouse in Southampton
An arrowslit at Cité de Carcassonne. The wall thickness is reduced to 0.7 m to accommodate the niche and the embrasure widens at an angle of 35°.

Balistraria, plural balistrariae, from balister, crossbowman can often be found in the curtain walls of medieval battlements beneath the crenellations.

Although used in late Greek and Roman defences, arrowslits were not present in early Norman castles.

Reconstructed wooden hoarding at the Cité de Carcassonne, France

Hoarding (castle)

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Reconstructed wooden hoarding at the Cité de Carcassonne, France
The interior of a reconstructed hoarding at Caerphilly Castle, Wales.

A hoard or hoarding was a temporary wooden shed-like construction on the exterior of a castle during a siege that enabled the defenders to improve their field of fire along the length of a wall and, most particularly, directly downwards towards the bottom of the wall.

Another reconstructed hoarding can be seen in Caerphilly Castle, also in South Wales, which extends along the northern curtain wall of the inner bailey.