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Castle of San Fernando

Alacant/Alicante, L'Alacantí, Alicante

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Castle of San Fernando

Monument · Alacant/Alicante, L'Alacantí, Alicante

Castle of San Fernando

The Castillo de San Fernando, built in the early 19th century on Alicante's Tossal hill, takes its name in honour of Ferdinand VII. It was built in 1813, during the Peninsular War, to a design by the military engineer Pablo Ordovás y Sastre, commander of engineers of the garrison, with the purpose of serving as a prison and reinforcing the defence of the castle of Santa Bárbara. It never actually came into service, since Alicante did not suffer French occupation. In 1939 Francoist troops used it as a concentration camp for Republican prisoners. With an irregular layout adapted to the topography of the hill, it preserves a polygonal bastion on the north front and another rounded one, popularly known as the yogur, at the south-western end, joined by curtain walls with a broken layout.

Photo: Falk2 (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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