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The approach to Salses-le-Chateau, the Trident Missile Program of fortresses of the late medieval period.
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This low, squat fortress of the 1650s and qhich straddled the fluid border berween France & Spain cost an absolute fortune to build and housed1500 crack troops in relative luxury. It reprsents the zenith of medieval military architecture.
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The curved walls of Salses were designed to deflect iron cannonballs with unpredictable results for the attacker.
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The design of the fortress was completed by a Spanish engineer of genius who remains almost unknown.
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Hide of a unicorn hanging in Salses-le-Chateau.
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Le lunette de Salses
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A great example of the transition between medieval castle & the modern geometric fortress, sunk into the ground.
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Salses owes its main innovative features to the necessity of adapting to the development of artillery that used metal cannonballs
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The outer walls are 6-10m thick and are buried to half their height in a huge moat that could be flooded. Above ground the fortress rises to between 3 and 7 floors served by a maze of internal passages.
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The huge paved parade ground at the heart of Salses in the centre of which is a well. It is bordered on 3 sides by an arcaded portico.
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A surveillance window in the inner keep overlooks the courtyard and central well. Salses garrisoned 1,500 Spanish soldiers & cavalry.
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Another view from the inner keep at Salses. The inner keep was separated from the courtyard by an inner moat and by a rampart which was never completed.
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The keep at Salsesis a seven storey - the upper terrace reaches 20m.
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The latrines at Salses were linked to a main drain and there was 1 per every 10 soldiers. Unheard of luxury and sophisticated sanitation for a vital frontier fortress.
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The great fireplace in the governor's quarters in the inner keep.
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Windows with built-in seats for the officers in the governor's quarters.
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None of the comforts prejudiced the necessities of military efficiency since all of the rooms were equipped with firing embrasures & murder holes.
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Interior window in the keep at Salses
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Inside the keep at Salses. For a period if time in the 1600s this place would have been a complete military secret - like a nuclear submarine base.
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The high walls of the keep at Salses were capable of absorbing the force of iron cannonballs without significant damage.
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The fortress contained all the vital facilities including bakeries, dry food storage & flour stores and sophisticated water distribution.
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Note the firing embrasure directly opposite the doorway.
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Internal courtyards within the keep at Salses
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The kitchens below the inner keep at Salses
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Furnaces in the kitchens of the fortress of Salses-le-Chateau
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Vast chambers for storage at Salses meant that supplies for a minimum of 40 days coukd be stored for 1,500 soldiers including 100 cavalry.
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Graffito at Salses, possibly from during its usage as a prison. Taulier is an informal french word for hoteliet
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Magnificent heavy gates to the outer keep at Salses
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The inner keep at Salses. By 1659 it was all over for the fortress as the Treaty of the Pyrenées finally settled the border some thirty miles to the south.
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This is what it looks like on Google Earth
