Castle Hunting: Kizkalesi Castles

You know you’ve arrived in Kizkalesi when you spot the floating castle. Sitting some thousand feet offshore, it’s the focal point for this sandy little town in southern Turkey. Walking the beach or sitting in a deserted shorefront bar, the "Maiden" castle is pretty much the best and only thing to look at.

But this isn't the only castle in town. At one end of the beach, more ruined and less photographed, a second fortress lies. Maybe not quite as immediately gripping, Korykos castle was once more impressive. (Admittedly, though, it just doesn’t look as cool.)

The natural harbors that line this part of the coast are made even more attractive by plentiful freshwater springs, which have been an important part of life here forever. Situated at a strategic point in the Eastern Mediterranean, Korykos, as Kizkalesi was called under Greek rule, was once at the naval crossroads between Greece, Cyprus and the Middle Eastern states further south. It changed hands many times, grew and then diminished, and eventually came to be ruled by the Byzantian Emperors for a short time. It was during the Byzantine era that the two castles were constructed – the 12th century rulers were worried about pirates more than anything, and were trying to fortify the port.
The pirate activity continued throughout the middle ages, much of it committed by moorish and cypriot boats. A lot of this Mediterranean piracy was actually focused on land raids, and the population in the area shifted away from the water to the inland fields. Still, the Korykos and Maiden forts were maintained to guard the harbor, and to act as a base for a fleet of Byzantine naval ships that patrolled the regional waters.

Interestingly, many pieces of the old Roman town were incorporated into the stonework, with scrolling and carved letters visible at random in the walls, and even pieces of round columns fitted here and there. We talked about how evocatively Mediterranean white stone is, and how anything built with the stuff seems ancient almost by default.
The land castle (called simply Korykos) is really quite huge, with remains of a large residential complex and chapel protruding from the weeds. Unlike the Maiden castle, the Korykos complex wasn’t repaired after the Ottomans took control in the fifteenth century. Kizkalesi had shrunk to a village by that point, as more people moved inland away from the pirates. It’s thought that the new empire was more concerned with the aesthetic value of the floating fortress and less about its strategic importance.
The walls on shore remain, though, with impressive engineering that allowed for Korykos to be accessed by water while remaining protected. Around the eastern and northern walls, away from the sea, a complicated moat system (it’s dry now) was carved into the rock. Fronting the ocean, the exterior wall was fitted with port doors that could be reached by small craft. Bulwarking this lower wall were low towers designed to engage with enemy ships while remaining below the line of sight for the main keep.

The outer walls, in fact, were built slightly later than the inner walls. They were added both to create a second layer of defense and to cut off the shoreline so that boats couldn’t land directly in front of the battlements.

A land bridge was built to connect the two castles, doubling as a breakwater.

The popular (and probably untrue) story about Maiden castle is that it was built by a king for his daughter. A fortuneteller had prophesied that the girl would be killed by a snakebite, so the king found the one place in his domain where there were no snakes - the small island in Korykos harbor – and built a fortress there. The girl was imprisoned in the castle until the prophesy came true – a small adder was brought to the island accidentally, hidden in a basket of fruit. In the princesses memory, the castle was named “Maiden.”

In reality, there are many towers and forts in the Middle East called “Maiden.” We’ve seen four or five ourselves. The name used to mean that the fortification hadn’t been breached, though often the moniker stuck around after a place had been captured. There’s always a more fanciful story attached, though, that usually has to do with a king and his daughter (a famous example, the legend of Baku’s iconic Maiden Tower, involves the heartbroken maiden throwing herself from the top).

We were offered a ride out to the castle, but it would have been in a paddleboat and the sea was a bit rough for that. In the summer, most visitors swim out, but the February water was a little cold to try. It was disappointing not to be able to poke around, but it was pretty enough that we didn't care.

It’s quite a building, and at sunset it’s gorgeous. It's the offseason, so we had the beach almost to ourselves in the cool evening. With a line of recent, ugly development at our backs, we could look out to sea at a view that's remained unchanged for centuries.

Castle Hunting: The Svaneti Towers

During the last decade of the 12th century and the first decade of the 13th, under the rule of the beloved Queen Tamar, Georgia prospered, grew and was peaceful. During her reign, Tamar often made the long voyage into the upper reaches of the Svaneti valleys, spending summers there and helping to found metalworking and painting schools – she supposedly loved the green pastures and imposing glaciers, the simple people and the restful quiet. It was a golden age for Georgia and, for a moment, it seemed that the isolated Svan people were on the brink of becoming more integrated with their neighbors.

Tamar died in 1213. In 1220, the Mongols made their first contact with Georgia. A few years later the country was conquered, the military massacred, the aristocracy killed or in hiding, the entire region overrun by Genghis Khan’s horsemen. It would take hundreds of years before Georgia could claim true independence again – after the Mongols left the Persians and Ottomans fought over the scraps, then ceded the area to the Russians.

Only the Svans were able to repel the Mongols, and were never overtaken by Turkey or Persia. They sealed themselves in their mountain hideaway, secure in their towers, never quite trusting the outside world.

These towers are among the most unique and fascinating fortifications in the world. Instead of entrusting the defense of a town to a large fortress or castle, each family built their own tower. Most of them were erected between the 9th and 13th centuries, though the foundations of some have been shown to be much older - perhaps even dating from the 6th century.

In total, there are some 175 towers surviving, with large concentrations in Chazhashi and in Mestia, where there are 47. At one time, however, there were as many as 500 of these buildings in Svaneti, with nearly 100 in Mestia alone.

From a distance, they prickle the hillsides and look - somewhat pessimistically - like smokestacks.

Many of Mestia's towers have been preserved and are - if not lived in - at least still attached to domestic quarters built around their base. Completely integrated into the town, the defenses rise everywhere. As recently as the 1970's, there were still many occupied towers, and during civil conflicts with the Russians, they were supposedly even employed as gunning positions.

There are also some Svaneti strongholds that have been miraculously preserved. This is the main room of a large, intact tower-house. Once belonging to the Margianis, an important family in the town - the woman who showed us the house used the Russian word for "king" - the building is part of a complex that included three towers and this residency.

The woodwork is all, amazingly, original. It dates mostly from the 12th century, and is intricately carved and worked. The holes that you can see in the far wall are actually cattle stanchions. The animals stood on a lower floor, feeding from a trough along the ground. The human inhabitants slept in long, communal beds in the space just above their cows - the animal's body heat helping to keep the family warm in the winter.
The towers were used for food storage as well as defense, and their interiors - though narrow - are many layered. It's unusual to find such slender holds with five or six stories, but this was the pattern that nearly every family followed. The interior dimensions remain constant; the slight slope of the walls is created by thinner stones at the top and a wider foundation.

The Margiani tower that's open to the public is a narrow, difficult-to-climb structure with extremely shoddy ladders. Like many keeps and strongholds, the door is some twelve feet above the ground, with a ladder or staircase below that can be destroyed to increase defensibility. Inside, large, flat rocks lay beside the ladder holes, ready to be employed as seals. Unlike a few other, similar towers in these mountains, the Svan versions have crenelated tops and roofs.

The medieval Svan families were just as worried about being attacked by neighbors as by invading armies. After all, the high Caucasus form an imposing natural barrier between the towns and the rest of the region, meaning that contact with foreigners was very rare. The Svan people are notorious for their blood feuds and for their internal, familial standards of law. The Margiani family, after all, had three prisons in their compound.

Another interesting facet of this particular family defense is that the three towers were never connected by a wall. There were tunnels, though, that linked the buildings. Recently, it was discovered that there was also an escape tunnel, that led up the hill into the woods above.
In all our travels, I've never seen anything quite like these citadels. They accent this wild, independent place beautifully. Seven hundred years after the Svaneti valleys were sealed off from the rest of Georgia, the immediacy of the isolation is still gripping.

We had a feeling of discovery in these mountains, as though we had stumbled upon a place that was only just waking up from a long hibernation.

Castle Hunting: Castillo de Olite

Before Versaille and the Royal Palace of Madrid, before the Winter Palace and Buckingham, when western Europe was a fragmented and warlike place, the kings of Navarre constructed one of the greatest royal residences of the middle ages. Rising high above the tiny village of Olite, the incredible Castillo de Olite was once among the largest, grandest and most luxurious seats in Europe.
The medieval Kingdom of Navarre was dwarfed by its neighbors, France, Castile and Aragon, but grew wealthy during the 14th century because of its extensive land holdings – notably Brie and Champagne. Charles III (“the Noble,” the son of Charles II, “the Wicked”) prospered during a peaceful period immediately after the hundred years war, when relative calm in the region allowed him to finish a number of construction projects that had lain dormant for some time. The cathedral of Pamplona and a royal palace at Tafalla were completed, as well as a number of new roads and water systems. His finest achievement, though, was the expansion of the old Olite castle, which took place between 1387 and 1424.
There has been a fortress at Olite since the third century, when a Roman structure was built to hold the southern Pyrenees. Later, the Visigoths and then the first Kings of Navarre and Pamplona rebuilt and expanded the castle, also adding a large, walled chapel and several towers. Today, most of this "old castle" is partly in shambles and mostly overlooked - it's completely dwarfed by the new castle.
The building was constructed primarily as a grand residence, and has a number of quirks - like the recessed archways and a covered roadway that runs directly through one section of wall.

But, unlike later rulers, the reign of Charles III was firmly entrenched in the middle ages, meaning that his palace needed to remain at least somewhat fortified.
Olite's new fortress was extended a few times during its expansion, giving it a rambling, complex footprint. Towers and chambers crop up in clusters, the walls run in strange zigzags. A huge cistern tower protrudes from one side, the cracks in its stones sealed up with lead. Pipes run throughout the new castle, creating one of the most elaborate running-water systems of the time. The reservoir was filled by ceramic piping from the nearby Cicados river, and raised into the cistern by a towering wooden wheel.

The size of Olite is extraordinary enough, but it was the interior that was most impressive at the time. An esteemed German traveler in the 15th century wrote, according to the tourist brochure, that he was "convinced that there is no other king with such a beautiful palace as this one, with so many gilded rooms." There was a large aviary for exotic birds, and Charles kept lions, giraffes and camels in the courtyard. The ceilings were reportedly among the finest in Europe, with extensive carving and paintings.
The "hanging" gardens, though, were the most mentioned aspect of Olite when they were built. A series of small courtyards, forty feet above the ground, were designed to both shelter the rare plants grown inside and to withstand the weight of several tons of earth and sod. Whole lawns and hedges were cultivated, along with a number of sizable trees and an orangerie. Large, arched rooms beneath the gardens were used for nothing other than support and drainage - they were too damp for storage or habitation.

Sadly, most of the interiors and an appreciable amount of the infrastructure were destroyed during the Napoleonic wars, when the Spanish general Espoz y Mina controversially decided to burn Olite to prevent the retreating French from using it for shelter. The castle lay in ruin between 1813, when it was burned, and the 1930's, when it was comprehensively renovated.
It's a fascinating place, and probably less visited than it should be. Today, Navarre's interior is something of a forgotten land, its dry plains and empty mountains mostly passed by for the coast or Pamplona. We stayed the night in Olite, just a few steps away from the castle walls, and felt a powerful sense of time and age. Driving away, we talked for a long time about how amazing and unique the place was, about how it was unlike any other castle we've been to.

A Muse's Mansion: Gala Dalí Castle

At one point in his career, Salvador Dalí signed his art with both his name and his wife's. He explained that Gala was so much a part of him, his life and his work that it was only fitting. The Gala Dalí Castle (also called Castell de Púbol), was purchased and redecorated by the artist with only his wife in mind. They call the site the southernmost point of the Catalonian "Salvador Dalí Triangle," whose other two points are in Cadaques and Figueres. Walking through, you realize that it is as much if not more about Gala than Salvador. Which doesn't make it any less interesting. This shade of blue must have been her favorite color, because the house was absolutely dripping with it.
I guess I assumed that a grand artist's mansion would be off on its own somewhere in picturesque seclusion. Driving into the little town of La Pera, we found a cluster of old houses clinging to the edge of the property. It immediately humanized the place and the people who'd lived in it. Legend has it that Gala got to know the locals particularly well, sending for handsome young men well into her late eighties. Dalí didn't seem to mind, as part of the reason for his purchasing the castle was to give her that sort of freedom. He couldn't have been all that surprised, either. They fell in love while she was married to surrealist poet Paul Éluard and having an affair with Max Ernst.
Every room had something amusing, something fascinating, something beautiful. Most of the radiators were covered with wicker screens, but this one was tucked away behind a door painted with an exact likeness of the hidden utilities. There was a lion's head flanked on both sides by huge bouquets of dried flowers, a coffee table which stood on ostrich legs and a chess set with pieces that resembled severed fingers. There were also lace canopied beds and a sweetly designed kitchen. It was fascinating to walk through - even more so because photo portraits of Gala, taken in each room, were hung above the spot in which she Salvador had her pose.
Downstairs, in the crypt, Mrs. Dalí is buried. A stuffed giraffe watches over her grave and an empty spot, presumably where he would have preferred to have been buried, sits alongside her. At the time of our visit, a really great photography exhibition was on display- Dalí by Halsman. The portraits of the artist, playful and clever and humorous, filled the room with so much energy that you left feeling like he (and his shape-shifting mustache) were following you through the rest of the house.
A blue Cadillac, with Monaco license plates (something particularly interesting to us), sat in the garage. When Gala died, Salvador took her for a spin in the Cadillac, bringing her from Figueres to Castell de Púbol along her favorite route. You'd think that would make the car seem macabre, but in this atmosphere, it was just another quirky detail. Gala's orange Datsun was parked outside.
There were incredibly views from the balconies and a lush garden, filled with pomegranate and lemon trees, in the yard. Elephants with giraffe legs stood around the greenery and a large fountain polka dotted with Richard Wagner's head were the expected touches of whimsy. It's an excellent place to visit, whether you know anything about Dalí or not. Just being somewhere that is at once comfortable and bizarre, absurdest and romantic is a lot of fun. It's a glimpse at the reality of a surrealist - and his muse.

Castle Hunting: Castelo de Marvão

Portugal's back has always been against the wall. It is a country that looks outward toward the ocean and once controlled huge portions of the globe with its powerful navy. But even as the kingdom expanded to the far colonial corners of the world, the land border with Spain was ever contested. A coastal nation at heart, Portugal nevertheless had to expend a lot of effort maintaining a string of defensive positions along it's backcountry mountains, here in the rocky nowhere. The Castelo de Marvão is one of these forts, and it's an impressive one.
Built on a high hilltop of jagged quartz, Marvão's has an excellent position and vantage point in a mostly flat landscape. Along the border to the north, the mountains are higher, and snowy ranges like the Serra da Estrela provide a natural break between the two countries. In this lower land, outcroppings like this define the boundary. To this day, in land further south, there are disputes about the actual division, where old contests have never fully been resolved.
The castle has an unusually long outer wall, which is essentially intended to cover as much of the hill's flat top as possible. It extends from the main keep to a secondary gate complex, which accesses the town of Marvão, which is itself walled. The keep sits atop the steepest point, with solid rock underneath and a secondary tower alongside. In the rear, terraced battlements step down underneath, constructed as more room was required for cannons.
While the outer walls are low and, frankly, too long to be effective (the castle was taken several times, it's not the epitome of defensibility), both the central stronghold and the gate complex are very well protected. One feature of the entrance: behind the door, there is a curving corridor, almost overhung by small towers and firing positions, making it difficult to proceed inward after the entrance was breached. The Marvão's main weakness is that the two defensive focal points are separated by such a long length of wall, without towers and requiring a large force to defend.
Another weakness - as it is with many castles - is the lack of water. The hard quartz under the walls was a great foundation and discouraged tunneling, but also made digging a well impossible. This is a very dry climate, with a deep water table. So, a large, covered cistern was built to collect rain water in case of siege. This is perhaps the most echo-ey place I've ever been. Our camera shutters rang out like slamming doors.
Although it's importance increased when Portugal and Spain began to congeal into nations, Marvão has been defended since Roman times, and was the site of an important battle between the Ceasar's troops and an army from Pompei. It's defenses were expanded by the Moors, and then by the Christian "reconquista" forces. The genesis of the present form was really only begun in 1300, though, when Portugal's nascent nation was beginning to seek out its inland boundary. The inner buildings retain a lot of Moorish character, and the courtyards feel especially Portuguese, with tiling and whitewashed walls.
It was some three centuries later, after the entire Iberian peninsula had been semi-united under the Spanish Hapsburgs, that the castle saw the most action. The Portuguese Restoration War, as it is known, was a revolt and separation from the Spanish, and was fought in large part along this border. Although it largely consisted of skirmishes and raids, it lasted for 28 years and Marvão was among the leading strongholds. Even after a peace was attained, the region was uneasy, with the neighboring sides maintaining an armed presence for two centuries, and re-engaging in the Peninsular War (part of the larger Napoleonic wars) between 1807 and 1814.
Today, the castle seems cut off from the rest of Portugal, being too far inland for the coastal tourists. There is no admission, no attendant, no signage or information - remarkable for such a large and impressively preserved castle. Walking around, we saw only two other tourists and a man who was fixing a streetlight. There'e little chance of war with Spain these days, and both countries seem to be facing away from this line.

The view from the top of the keep is spectacular, a countryside of cork and olive trees stretching out into both realms, almost empty of houses and people.

Castle Hunting: Castelo de Guimarães

When I learn that a castle has been majorly rebuilt, altered or otherwise "recreated," it feels like a betrayal - the history of the place just doesn't feel quite authentic. When I visit a castle that's little more than a pile of stones, it's also disappointing - oh, what could have been if this place had been kept up.

Then, there are places like the Castelo de Guimarães, which was built in 1139, hasn't undergone much restoration and still looks perfectly, amazingly solid. It's a fantastic small fortress, with an important place in Portuguese history and lots of interesting quirks.
When count Henry of Portugal gained his kingdom independence from the Kingdom of León at the beginning of the 12th century, he chose Guimarães as his capital and the castle there as his fortified residence. An earlier fort, built by countess Mumadona Dias about a hundred years prior, was in drastic need of repair. Henry essentially destroyed what there was of the existing structure and rebuilt the castle on the same footprint, utilizing a hard granite outcropping as a foundation and quarried stone for the walls. The local granite is excellent for castles, as it's very hard and can be cut into uniform pieces - one of the reasons the castle is still standing today.
The outer walls are extremely thick, with no ornamentation and almost no openings. Many of the towers are actually just buttresses, without interiors, and were erected more as bulwarking and height advantages than as occupiable spaces. The two entrances are especially well guarded, with narrow openings and massive, solid pillar-towers on either side. Firm footing was also extremely valuable, as the stone floor allowed the walls to remain well supported and discouraged mining or tunneling.

The walls are built around a central, square keep that is still as perfectly erect and right-angled as it was nine hundred years ago. With virtually no openings in the walls - which are themselves over six feet thick - the structure would have been extremely hard to attack. A single entrance was placed high up on the front wall, accessed by a bridge from the outer crenelations. If the initial defenses were breached, the bridge could be destroyed, leaving no easy point of attack.
Guimarães was built in the late stages of the “Reconquista,” when the Iberian peninsula was being reclaimed from the Moorish people who had previously occupied Spain and Portugal. It’s primary goal was to protect the Portuguese counts from attack by the moors and from the Viking raiders who were active in the region at the time. As Portugal grew, though, and expanded southward, cities along the coast and fortresses along the inland mountains became more important and Guimarães grew less vulnerable.
By the 16th century, the castle had virtually no military importance in an area that had very little threat from invasion. Unlike other abandoned castles, though, Guimarães was too well built to crumble with disuse. It was briefly used as a makeshift jail, then spent a long period as a royal hay barn and cattle shed. By the beginning of the 1800’s, the building had come to be seen as a relic, and the city made plans to tear it down and use the stone to pave streets. For one reason or another, that never happened and Guimarães survived. A brief restoration project – which amounted to a thorough sweeping out and a little patching up – took place between 1937 and 1940. Today, the castle is considered a national icon.
We saw photographs of the castle pre-restoration, and, aside from some sheds and rough spots, it looked almost identical. Standing on the roof, leaning against the original ramparts, the stones had a weighty permanence, so little has changed in nine centuries. While it's not that large or immediately impressive, the Castelo de Guimarães left us smiling and enamored. Not many historic sights are this quietly classic.

Castle Hunting: Le Rocher de Monaco

Le Rocher, or "The Rock," is the historic and current heart of Monaco - really, the reason for its existence. Jutting up from the sea, it is topped by an ancient fortress and palace that has grown over the centuries to include a little village and a slew of museums and giftshops. This is the site of the princely palace and the seat of government, right in the center of Monaco's amphitheater of highrises and yachts. It's one of the more unique castles we've been to.
Le Rocher has been inhabited for millennia - long before recorded history, the natural harbor it creates on one side (now called Port Hercule) attracted ships and traders. The Romans occupied the area in 122 AD, and set up a military base that displaced a long succession of Greek, Phoenician and native peoples in the surrounding mountains and along the coast. About a thousand years later, in 1191, the first real fortress was erected by the Genoans - by 1215, some semblance of the current outer walls had taken shape, originally consisting of four towers and a thick curtain wall.

The interior pallazzo, which began to be defined in the middle of the fifteenth century, evolved in tandem with the outer walls. Although the two structures eventually merged and became essentially part of one whole, they should really be considered two entities. It's opulence isn't immediately evident from the front, but the Princely palace is actually quite large, stretching quite far along the ridge. The low-slung design was intended to keep it protected from cannon fire aimed from below, and the relatively plain facade is a function of its earlier defensiveness.
In 1297, a nobleman named Francesco Grimaldi - the distant ancestor of the current prince - gained entry to the castle disguised as a monk. He killed the guard and opened the gate for his waiting troops, who sacked the fortress.

The present Grimaldi employs a few guards of his own - their duties are mostly ceremonial, of course. Every day at noon, a too-popular changing of the guard plays to a huge crowd's thirst for princely ceremony. It's the absolute worst time of day to visit the fortress.

Although the castle is difficult to attack directly because of the natural protection of the cliffs, Le Rocher became vulnerable as gunpowder weapons became more sophisticated. It's position, flanked by higher peaks and with its back to the sea, had once been ideal. As the range of cannons increased, though, the mountains behind became a liability and the castle began to be attacked directly from the water. Naval assaults heavily damaged the walls and towers many times, especially from the end of the fifteenth century onward. New gun platforms were added in the 16th century, and a series of subterranean passageways allowed for protected movement between the bastions.
In the end, Monaco's survival was dependent more on diplomacy and its varying alliances than on its walls. Long aligned with Spain for protection against the Genoans, Venetians and French, the Princes eventually did the inevitable and became allies of France (though not forever). This provided some relief at the rear, but didn't help the Monegasques much on their seaward side. France's relatively weak navy concentrated little on the Mediterranean, and Monaco found it necessary to keep its defenses intact much longer than other, similar cities did - right up to the beginning of the 19th century, in fact.
This need for protection is part of the reason why Le Rocher is so well preserved, despite the age of its walls. The other reason is that the Grimaldis didn't have room in the country for other, newer fortresses and needed to renovate rather than move on. In other places - even in other, tiny Principalities like Liechtenstein - rulers and noblemen could let one castle fall into ruin and build another. In Monaco, there's only one big rock, and the Princes had to make do.