Castle Map

Castle

Çimenlik Castle

Turkey · 15th century

Founded
1462
Location
Çanakkale Province
Coordinates
40.14636°, 26.39914°
Links
OpenStreetMap · Wikimedia Commons
Open on the map →Wikipedia ↗
Çimenlik Castle in Turkey
Photo: Maarten Sepp · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Description

Kale-i Sultaniye (formerly Kal'a-i Sultaniye) or Çimenlik Castle is a castle which was built on the Asian shore of the Dardanelles in Turkey in 1462. Today, it is part of the Çanakkale Naval Museum.

The castle was erected on the Asian side of the Dardanelles in 1462a, during the reign of Mehmed the Conqueror. Directly opposite the castle, on the European side of the Dardanelles, there is Kilitbahir Castle. The fortress was equipped with 30 cannons, and the 1,250-meter width of the Dardanelles was taken into gun range. The castle was strengthened in 1551 by Suleiman the Magnificent. It was partially renewed during the Cretan War with Venice, and completely renovated during the Napoleonic Wars by Selim III. Kale-i Sultaniye played a key role in the defense of the Dardanelles until World War I.

The seaside walls were rebuilt in the late 19th century as a row of gun emplacements rather than a fortified wall. For this reason, the fort became the target of British and French ships in 1915. The artillery shell that was fired from the British battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth on March 18, 1915, remained unexploded in the 2-meter hole it opened in the northern fortification wall, and is still where it fell.

Today it serves as a museum. In the castle garden and park area, cannons used by different nations in attacks against the Dardanelles throughout history are exhibited.

Çimenlik Castle consists of two parts, the outer walls and the inner castle. The outer walls are 11 meters high, 8 meters wide in places, built on a simple rectangular plan of 100 by 150 meters, and there are 9 bastions on the walls.

In the garden, there is a gunpowder mill and two mosques built during the reigns of Fatih and Abdülaziz and named after them.

The walls of the inner castle, measuring 42 by 48 meters, are 9.5 meters wide, reaching a height of 25 meters. The first floor of this three-story castle was made from concrete 4 meters above the ground level of the inner courtyard, while the upper two floors were wooden.

Text adapted from “Çimenlik Castle” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

In the rankings

Çimenlik Castle ranks #7,572 of 9,902 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #91 of the 130 mapped in Turkey. Founded 1462, it is older than 46% of the atlas's dated landmarks, one of 596 atlas entries founded in the 15th century. 1 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. See how Turkey compares in the castle statistics.

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