Acitadel is the most fortified area of a town orcity. It may be acastle,fortress, or fortified center. The term is adiminutive ofcity, meaning "little city", because it is a smaller part of the city of which it is the defensive core.
In afortification withbastions, the citadel is the strongest part of the system, sometimes well inside the outer walls and bastions, but often forming part of the outer wall for the sake of economy. It is positioned to be the last line of defence, should the enemy breach the other components of the fortification system.[1]
Some of the oldest known structures which have served as citadels were built by theIndus Valley civilisation, where citadels represented a centralised authority. Citadels in Indus Valley were almost 12 meters tall.[2] The purpose of these structures, however, remains debated. Though the structures found in the ruins ofMohenjo-daro were walled, it is far from clear that these structures were defensive against enemy attacks. Rather, they may have been built to divert flood waters.
Several settlements inAnatolia, including the Assyrian cities of Kaneš in modern-dayKültepe, featured citadels. Kaneš' citadel contained the city's palace, temples, and official buildings.[3] The citadel of the Greek city ofMycenae was built atop a highly-defensible rectangular hill and was later surrounded by walls in order to increase its defensive capabilities.[4]
Reconstruction of the redoubt ofBibracte, a part of the Gaulishoppidum. TheCelts utilized these fortified cities in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC.
InAncient Greece, anacropolis, which literally means "high city", placed on a commanding eminence, was important in the life of the people, serving as a lookout, a refuge, and a stronghold in peril, as well as containing military and food supplies, ashrine ortemple, and a royalpalace. The most well known is theAcropolis of Athens, but nearly every Greek city-state had one – theAcrocorinth is famed as a particularly strong fortress. In a much later period, when Greece was ruled by theLatin Empire, the same strong points were used by the new feudal rulers for much the same purpose.
In the first millennium BC, theCastro culture emerged in northwestern Portugal and Spain in the region extending from theDouro river up to theMinho, but soon expanding north along the coast, and east following the river valleys. It was an autochthonous evolution ofAtlantic Bronze Age communities. In 2008, the origins of theCelts were attributed to this period byJohn T. Koch[5] and supported byBarry Cunliffe.[6] TheAve River Valley in Portugal was the core region of this culture,[7] with a large number of small settlements (thecastros), but also settlements known as citadels oroppida by the Roman conquerors. These had several rings of walls and the Roman conquest of the citadels of Abobriga, Lambriaca and Cinania around 138 BC was possible only by prolongedsiege.[8] Ruins of notable citadels still exist, and are known by archaeologists asCitânia de Briteiros,Citânia de Sanfins,Cividade de Terroso andCividade de Bagunte.[7]
Rebels who took power in a city, but with the citadel still held by the former rulers, could by no means regard their tenure of power as secure. One such incident played an important part in the history of theMaccabean Revolt against theSeleucid Empire. TheHellenisticgarrison ofJerusalem and local supporters of the Seleucids held out for many years in theAcra citadel, making Maccabean rule in the rest of Jerusalem precarious. When finally gaining possession of the place, the Maccabeans pointedly destroyed and razed the Acra, though they constructed another citadel for their own use in a different part of Jerusalem.
Although much ofNice was ransacked during the 1543siege of the city,Franco-Ottoman forces besieging Nice were unable to capture its Citadel. Citadels have often been used as a last defence for a besieged army.
At various periods, and particularly during theMiddle Ages and theRenaissance, the citadel – having its own fortifications, independent of the city walls – was the last defence of a besieged army, often held after the town had been conquered. Locals and defending armies have often held out citadels long after the city had fallen. For example, in the 1543Siege of Nice the Ottoman forces led byBarbarossa conquered and pillaged the town and took many captives, but the citadel held out.
In thePhilippines, theIvatan people of the northern islands ofBatanes often built fortifications to protect themselves during times of war. They built their so-calledidjangs on hills and elevated areas. These fortifications were likened to European castles because of their purpose. Usually, the only entrance to the castles would be via a rope ladder that would only be lowered for the villagers and could be kept away when invaders arrived.[9]
In times of war, the citadel in many cases afforded retreat to the people living in the areas around the town. However, citadels were often used also to protect a garrison or political power from the inhabitants of the town where it was located, being designed to ensure loyalty from the town that they defended. This was used, for example, during theDutch Wars of 1664–1667: KingCharles II of England constructed a Royal Citadel atPlymouth, an important channel port which needed to be defended from a possible naval attack. However, due to Plymouth's support for theParliamentarians, in the then-recentEnglish Civil War, the Plymouth Citadel was so designed that its guns could fire on the town as well as on the sea approaches.
Barcelona had a great citadel built in 1714 to intimidate theCatalans against repeating their mid-17th- and early-18th-century rebellions against the Spanish central government.[10] In the 19th century, when the political climate had liberalized enough to permit it, the people of Barcelona had the citadel torn down, and replaced it with the city's main central park, theParc de la Ciutadella.[11] A similar example is theCitadella inBudapest, Hungary.
The attack on theBastille in theFrench Revolution – though afterwards remembered mainly for the release of the handful of prisoners incarcerated there – was to considerable degree motivated by the structure's being a Royal citadel in the midst of revolutionary Paris.
Similarly, afterGaribaldi's overthrow ofBourbon rule inPalermo, during the 1860Unification of Italy, Palermo's Castellamare Citadel – a symbol of the hated and oppressive former rule – was ceremoniously demolished.
Following Belgium gaining its independence in 1830, a Dutch garrison under GeneralDavid Hendrik Chassé held out inAntwerp Citadel between 1830 and 1832, while the city had already become part of independent Belgium.
TheSiege of the Alcázar in theSpanish Civil War, in which the Nationalists held out against a much larger Republican force for two months until relieved, shows that in some cases a citadel can be effective even in modern warfare; a similar case is theBattle of Huế during theVietnam War, where aNorth Vietnamese Army division held the citadel of Huế for 26 days against roughly their own numbers of much better-equipped US and South Vietnamese troops.
Since the mid 20th century, citadels have commonly enclosed military command and control centres, rather than cities or strategic points of defence on the boundaries of a country. These modern citadels are built to protect the command centre from heavy attacks, such as aerial or nuclear bombardment. Themilitary citadels under London in the UK, including the massive underground complex Pindar beneath theMinistry of Defence, are examples, as is theCheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker in the US.
On armouredwarships, the heavily armoured section of the ship that protects the ammunition and machinery spaces is called thearmoured citadel.
A modern naval interpretation refers to the heaviest protected part of the hull as "the vitals", and the citadel is the semi-armoured freeboard above the vitals. Generally, Anglo-American and German languages follow this while Russian sources/language refer to "the vitals" as цитадель "citadel". Likewise, Russian literature often refers to the turret of a tank as the 'tower'.
^Michel, Cecile (2016). Sharon R. Steadman, Gregory McMahon (ed.).The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia: (10,000-323 BC). Oxford. pp. 313–320.ISBN9780199336012.
^Thomas, Carol G.; Conant, Craig (2003).Citadel to City-State: The Transformation of Greece, 1200-700 BC. Indiana University Press. pp. 2–10.ISBN9780253216021.
^Cunliffe, Barry (2008).A Race Apart: Insularity and Connectivity in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 75, 2009, pp. 55–64. The Prehistoric Society. p. 61.
^abArmando Coelho Ferreira da Silva.A Cultura Castreja no Noroeste de Portugal. Museu Arqueológico da Citânia de Sanfins, 1986
^Don José de Santiago y Gómez (1896).Historia de Vigo y Su comarca. Imprenta y Lotografía Del Asilo De Huérfanos Del Sagrado Corázon de Jesús.
.jpg)
