Ceuta: Royal Walls of Ceuta
It’s hard to argue about the strategic importance of Ceuta at a peninsula sticking out into the Strait of Gibraltar – whoever controls Ceuta controls the trade. Phoenicians were the first to fortify this, then came Romans, Moors, Spanish. But it was the Portuguese in the middle of the 15th century that conquered Ceuta with a flotilla of 200 ships. The Portuguese went on building a massive fortress at the narrow isthmus between Africa and the Ceuta peninsula – layers of walls and moats that would render their colony impenetrable. Funny, but a hundred years later, Ceuta became Spanish when after a brief union of Spain and Portugal it decided to remain With Spain. For the next three hundred years, the Moors tried to recapture Ceuta from Spaniards and it withstood all the sieges, with more and more fortifications being added. Today’s fortress is almost unchanged and in absolutely perfect condition.
