Portuguese Castle

The Fort of Our Lady of the Conception, also known as the Portuguese Castle, is a red stone fortress on Hormuz Island, Iran. It is one of the last surviving monuments of Portuguese colonial rule in the Persian Gulf.

Ormuz (or Hormuz) was an important maritime city and a small kingdom near the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The original site of the city was on the north shore of the Gulf, about 30 miles east of the current Bandar Abbas. Around 1300, apparently in response to attacks from the Tartars, it moved to the small island of Gerun, which can be identified as the Organa of Nearcho, about 12 miles west and 5 miles from the coast.

Constructed on reddish stone on a rocky promontory at the far north of the island, the castle was originally cut off from the rest of the island by a moat, traces of which still remain. Although most of the roof caved in long ago, much of the lower part of the very substantial outer walls is intact, with the remains lying on different levels of the site.

Text adapted from “Fort Nossa Senhora da Conceição” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Portuguese Castle ranks #1,897 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #21 of the 169 mapped in Iran. Founded 1507, it is older than 44% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 718 atlas entries founded in the 16th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 3,526 times in the last 60 days, more than 78% of the atlas. 1 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. See how Iran compares in the castle statistics.

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