Gozo Cittadella #Two Restoration Results

Gozo Cittadella #Two Restoration Results

In Gozo Cittadella #1 post we arrived at the entrance to the Cittadella itself.

Inside the door is a large square with the cathedral directly in front of the entrance upon a wide flight of steps. This square contains government departments including the law courts which are still used today.

The square is not over large so photographs need to be taken from two corners.

These two photographs show the square taken from the top of the cathedral steps.

This image is of the right-hand side with the cathedral behind the camera. The law courts are on the right with the old prison just passed it in the corner.

The square is taken from the left-hand side showing the rear of the new door and the governors house on the left-hand side.

(These last two images I took yesterday on a much brighter day than the earlier ones were taken. Finally, we have some good weather.)

Stocks outside the old prison next to the law courts.

The main square image of the rear of the main door when fully open.

The governers house opposite the law courts just inside the entrance gate. The arch to the left leads to the ditch, original entrance and the battlements.

The original entrance has only a few meters of a walkway in front of it so a front view is not possible. This image is taken from the battlements above.

The original main entrance is seen here from inside the Citadelle with the arches forming the tunnel through the outer wall and was served by a bridge.

From the original entrance turning right leads to a stair tunnel down to the ditch which surrounded the east - south and southwest sections of the wall. The arched entrances are the stairways. The brown doors one open are toilets. (They have to go somewhere.) As can be seen, although the building is large the internal spaces are quite small. In those days people were smaller than now and even now Gozitans are shorter than most Europeans. When the original population of the whole island of around 6000 people were captured in 1551 and sold into slavery, their heights may have been even smaller.

Straight on through the old entrance leads to a few shops and the door at the end is now of an art gallery.

The stairwell leads to the ditch entrance which is to the lower right corner of the photograph.
It is 64 steps down to the entrance. I counted them just for this post while going to a shop in the Citadella. (It was closed for the week.)

In the next post, I will cover the ditch and the recent damage to it.