Ramparts of Archidona
Pedro Gurriarán Daza, Salvador García Villalobos, Nataša Ivanišević, Juan Ignacio Rosado Feito
Archidona defensive ramparts presented serious pathological problems, which required an urgent restoration work. Thereby, we find abandoned curtain walls and towers with their original construction, in which the passage of time and human action itself have caused significant losses of building material, disappearance of mortars and breakage of structures, among other injuries.
The wall, with pre-almohade origin (S. X – XI), was finished in the Nasrid time, in Muhammad V period, (S. XIV). In that moment, the old structures were reinforced through the masonry. After the Castilian conquest (1462), the population were leaving the steep hill, and they were settling on flat and fertile lands close to the labor lands. Without any use, the walls were abandoned and therefore, getting ruined, consequence of the plundering, the rain and the snow.
12 towers are restored in total. One of them is a tower-door, and the other 11 are flanking towers. Those flanking towers are treated in a special way depending on their problems. Supporting the restoration, a complete earthwork control is implemented as well as 8 surveys inside the walls, in which are discovered quite valuable building ruins, one of them were buried again and the rest restored for revalorization like the fantastic Nasrid house.
