Rize Castle, Byzantine castle in Rize, Turkey.
Rize Castle is a medieval fortress in Rize that consists of an upper citadel and a lower castle section. The walls vary in height from about 2 to 20 meters (6 to 65 feet) and cover roughly 480 square meters (5,160 square feet) with different bastion types throughout.
The upper citadel was built during Byzantine Emperor Justinian I's reign between 527 and 565 AD. The lower castle section dates to the 13th century and represents later defensive additions.
The fortress shows Byzantine building methods through carefully cut stone blocks and different bastion shapes with square, rectangular, and round towers. Visitors can see these different styles while walking through and understand how builders created varied defenses.
The upper section of the fortress contains a public park and tea room that visitors can explore during daylight hours. The grounds are easy to walk through and offer good views of the structure and the town below.
Parts of the original fortress walls now lie buried beneath modern concrete buildings and streets of present-day Rize. This makes it hard to grasp the full size of the structure when visiting the remaining ruins.
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