The star walls
Angled bastions allowing flanking fire.
Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Lanzen — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Axel Cotón Gutiérrez — CC BY-SA 4.0
**A star fort on the sea built after the English sacked Cádiz — and entry is free** — beside La Caleta beach. It was built in **1598** on the order of **Philip II** ⚠ **after the sack of the city in 1596** by an English fleet under the Earl of Essex — **which burned Cádiz and plundered it for weeks**. ✅ **Its design is a star**: **projecting angled bastions** instead of round towers — ⚠ **the modern fortification against artillery**: **the angles allow flanking fire on anyone approaching the curtain**, **and the walls are low, thick and sloped to absorb shot**. ✅ **Entry is free**, with a parade ground, a chapel and exhibition rooms. ✅ **And from its walls there is a view over La Caleta bay and the second castle**, ⚠ **the best sunset position in Cádiz**.
Angled bastions allowing flanking fire.
The sun setting into the Atlantic, seen from the wall.
A small beach between two castles in front of the fort.
Calle Antonio Burgos, 11002 Cadiz, Spain
**A direct engineering response to the invention of artillery — the star is a mathematical solution to a tactical problem.** ⚠ **The problem**: **medieval walls are tall and thin with round towers** — ✅ **excellent against ladders and catapults**, ⚠ **and disastrous against artillery**: **a tall thin wall is a large target and collapses under shot**. ✅ **The second problem**: **a round tower creates «dead angles»** — **areas at the wall's foot the defenders can neither see nor hit**; ⚠ **which an attacker reaches safely and mines beneath**. ✅ **The solution — the bastion**: **a projecting arrowhead-shaped work** ⚠ **so that every point on the wall is visible from, and covered by fire from, a neighbouring bastion** — **no dead angle**. ✅ **And the walls become low, thick and sloped** — **so shot glances off or is absorbed rather than breaching**; **often partly sunk behind a ditch**. ✅ **The geometric result**: **a star-shaped polygon** when drawn from above — ⚠ **a shape that is not aesthetic but computed**. ✅ **The system is called the *trace italienne*** because it developed in 15th-century Italy, **and spread across Europe**; ⚠ **and the walls of Bergamo and Lucca are of the same family**.
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