Kotor

After a long and fasanating day, arrived to the delightful coastal town of Kotor with its walled fortress, cobbled narrow streets and lovely buildings.
The Kotor Fortress has partly preserved its medieval defensive system (12th-14th centuries) characterized by narrow and high vertical ramparts (up to 1.5 m thick) occasionally strengthened by square based towers with walkways. Given its specific geostrategic position, for Venetians the Kotor Fortress represented a kind of experiment in new approaches to theory and practice of military architecture. It integrated a bastion defensive system, characteristic of the Italian "cinquecento" on the side facing the sea, with artillery platforms and lunettes above the town, and the still medieval system of defence on the side towards the hill. During the rule of the Venetian Republic (1420-1797) the Kotor Fortress was one of the most important fortifications on the eastern Adriatic coast, because by dominating the Bay of Boka Kotorska it guarded Venetian maritime trading routes towards the Levant. The fortress was in use during the Austro Hungarian rule (1814-1918), when Kotor was the seat of the civil and military government for the Bay of Boka Kotorska.Weiterlesen