Fortress walls The Byzantine historian Nicephorus Grigora wrote: “The Genoese were

Fortress walls

The Byzantine historian Nicephorus Grigora wrote: “The Genoese were content at first with a small area of ​​land, on which they lived without any other fence, like a ditch and a mound. After that, little by little and secretly, they began to bring stones and other materials to them by dry road and sea ... and, finally, they took more places than they had been allotted to. Not content with this, but wishing to increase the number and space of their yards, under the pretext of the need to increase the storerooms for goods, they spread their city behind a rampart and a moat and with such strength they built walls that, therefore, one could already expect something extraordinary. And truly ... Kafa finally became so strong that its inhabitants could already consider themselves secured from the attack of enemies. " The enemies of the Genoese at that time were the Tatar-Mongols and the Venetians, who were competitors in the trade.

The fortress had two lines of defense - the outer walls and the citadel. The citadel was surrounded by powerful fortifications made of limestone and reinforced with twelve towers. The height of the walls reached 11 meters, the width was 2 meters, and the total length was 718 meters. The city was the center of trade, and six gates led into it, as well as several marinas. Inside the fortress there were a consular palace, a treasury, the residence of a Latin bishop, a courthouse, offices for checking scales, warehouses and shops, as well as houses of noble merchants. Most of the inhabitants lived outside the citadel, the perimeter of the outer walls with 34 towers was almost 5.5 kilometers. Several towers have survived from these fortifications, one of them is located in the center of the modern city, not far from the train station. It is called the Tower of Constantine.