The Citadel Defense Strategies

The entrance bridge and the corridors inside


The main doors were built to the right, making them harder to ram

The designers of the Citadel of Aleppo did everything to make the fortification impossible to invade. They used several ingenious defense strategies that made it one of the hardest forts to conquer in the region.

Built atop a 50 m high hill for its natural defense advantages, the Citadel features a deep moat encircling the hill and a ring of walls and towers atop the hill. A steep bridge leads across the moat from an entrance tower on the lower side to the entrance fortifications above.

As you approach the entrance, the main doors are on the right as you enter, which makes it more difficult to ram them.
Once inside, a complex of defense mode was developed in the sequence of movement into the Citadel, as perpetrators would have to penetrate five great iron-plated doors - each set at a corner of the passageway - could be closed to trap invaders, and change direction 6 times through a series of 90 degree abrupt turns under a hail of arrows, fire and boiling oil being poured through the slit openings on the upper floors.
Moreover, there is almost no light inside. There are only a few holes in the ceiling through which rays of sunlight shed some light in the darkness of the corridor.