FAMAGUSTA FORTIFICATIONS

These fortifications (Gazimağusa Surları, Μεσαιωνικά Τείχη της Αμμοχώστου/Mesaionika Tichi tis Ammochostou) form a 3.5km-long enclosure around the old town, and include Othello Castle and the Canbulat Museum. Built under the Lusignans after Saladin's capture of Jerusalem in 1187, they were reinforced by the Venetians in the ^15th and ^16th centuries to defend what was then Cyprus' largest city (40,000 inhabitants in 1570). Today well-preserved, they enabled the city to hold out for eleven months against an Ottoman army of over 100,000 soldiers. But at the end of the siege, on August 4, 1571, Famagusta fell and the inhabitants who had not yet fled were massacred. A transition between medieval and Renaissance fortifications, the walls are sometimes 50 m wide, defended by the Othello tower facing the port, two fortified gates (Porte de Mer and Porte de Terre) and thirteen bastions with Italian names scattered around the entire enclosure, which forms an uneven rectangle. The most impressive of these projections designed by Venetian engineers are the Rivettina bastion to the southwest, the Martinengo bastion to the northwest and the dell'Arsenale bastion (renamed Canbulat by the Ottomans) to the southeast. The latter and Othello Castle offer views of the old town, the islets and the harbour breakwater.