When cities were in turmoil, and brigands loose in the land, a man’s home was, of necessity, his castle. …
For all one knows there will always be an Englishman who refers to his home as his castle. The conceit persists unchallenged because the castle in question is fictitious. Imaginary. A gulf of about ten centuries separates the modern individual from the time when castles were a common commodity, actually a necessity. Apart from ruins, what passes for castles today are the products of architectural taxidermy: mummified mansions, national monuments, and occasional houses of royalty.
Read More: http://www.urban-kaleidoscope.eu/index.php?id=1704 ---In 1656 the Russian army has beset also the city of Riga near the Baltic sea in the then Livonia (the current territory of Latvia) for about one and half month. The Moscovians could not sieze Riga, because it was defended by the Swedish army. In the book issued in 1697, which was designed to the actitivy of the King of Sweden, Karl Gustav, we find also a picture viewing the beset of Riga in1656.---
Castles, the strong metaphor of our presumed self-sufficiency, are an Old World institution. The combination of residence and fortress occurs mainly in Europe, Asia and Africa. Americans have their eccentricities, their penchant for the pseudo medieval, but seem to draw the line at castles. To him, a castle is not a house or a home but a moldy container of the darkest aspects of the Dark Ages. They are the fossils of architecture, an uncomfortable reminder of a time when wars were fought with arrows and lances, when killing was a handicraft rather than an industry. No architect within living memory has been commissioned to build a castle and Alcatraz and San Simeon, a sort of grafted heroic silhouette, does not count.
Read More:http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/africa/salt/salt-images.html ---Henry Salt:"Castle of the Sultaun of Aden at Lahadj" As we approached the town of Lahadj, we were met by a deputation, headed by the Dola of the place, who conducted us forwards, surrounded by his Ascari, who marched on wildly dancing, singing, tossing up their matchlocks, and shouting in the same manner as practised at Mocha when the Dola returns on public occasions from mosque. This scene lasted till we reached the first entrance of the Sultaun's house, where three irregular vollies of musquetry ended the ceremony. We were conducted thence through several passages, strongly barricaded at each end, up to an apartment opening to the sky . . . on the far side of which the Sultaun Hamed was waiting to receive us. . . . Of the town of Lahadj, which I had the opportunity of examining in the evening and in the course of the ensuing day, I have but few observations to make. The houses are, in general, formed of mud, and even the Sultaun's palace, which towers above the rest, is constructed of the same material, in the rude form of an ancient castle.---
Castles represent a link , a forgotten tie between architecture and the natural environment, pivotal points in the landscape. Topographical accents par excellence, they are always commensurate to nature’s scale. It borrows its protective coloration from the environment in much the same way that a practiced Japanese “steals” the trees’ silhouettes of his neighbor’s garden. The feudal touch is usually provided by an eye-catching cliff, a mesa, or a dense forest,all of them anathema to the democratically minded builder. After all, whenever modern people but up a building, in country or town, they seem bent on destroying the natural setting. Any outcrop- a tree, or boulder is usually pulverized to better visualize the creation. Man is a leveler at heart. For his flight of thought he needs,as it were, an airstrip, an expanse of nothing.
Image: http://explow.com/fleckenstein ---1589 engraving by Daniel Specklin, author of a book on fortifications, which here immortalizes the Alsatian Fleckenstein castle. It was razed in the seventeenth-century.---
It was only during the Crusades that the incombustible castle emerged. It was hideous chapter of history, but a castle built on high ground, treason excluded, remained impregnable; that is until gun powder came into use. It was perhaps the only time when a walled in, well provisioned populace was justified in experiencing a feeling of absolute security in the face of an invader.
But life was not worth living in a castle that was never assailed by forces stronger than the elements. Only during a siege did its true merits come to the fore. Dousing assailants with pitch and molten lead, missiles as deadly as bullets. A siege in full swing pinpointed the imperfections in layout and structure, and the burgrave would make a mental note to have the level of the moat- a castle’s Plimsoll line- slightly raised, or to make the hard edged towers round.
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