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The Trigonion tower : a contribution to the study of the turkish defence system of Thessaloniki

• Στεφάνου, Στέργιος Ν.

The cylindrical tower at Trigonion in Thessaloniki, was constructed about the second half of the 15th century, after it had replaced the preexisting at this corner of the Byzantine remparts quadrilateral tower. The remnants of the latter had been incorporated in the cylindrical tower’s body, whose internal circulation was therefore resolved in a peculiar way. The original form of the cylindrical tower, resembling to that of the White Tower, was transformed to what is now seen, about the 16th century -most probably in 1546, under the reign of Sultan Suli- man.As a part of Thessaloniki’s Turkish defence system the Trigonion Tower was destined to offer artillery cover to the east walls of the city’s and Acropolis’ remparts. This mission was better accomplished after the tower’s transformation, about the middle of the 16th century, when its initial form (recalling the 13th and 14th centuries’ French donjons) had been turned to a kind of bastion.The Trigonion tower constitutes a caracteristical sample of the tendences and peculiarity of the Turkish version for the artillery defence during the 15tli and 16th centuries, since there is the fact of the reduced manipulation of the preexisting remparts. The deformative -respect to its initial formtransformation of the Trigonion Tower is another characteristic not to be found in any other building of the same use, neither in Thessaloniki nor on Bosphorus and in Constantinople (except the Galata Tower). Furthermore, the Trigonion Tower as well as the White Tower, arc the only known military buildings that combine the forms of the cordone and projecting or cobelled eve -elements of Italian origine- to the turkish defencory design and use. This combination is the result -and also the proof- of the meeting between the two powerfull military and political forces of that era, in the East Mediterranean, Venice and Turkey.

• History and Archaeology

• Ιστορία
• Architecture and history

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