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57-654: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World listed by Hellenic culture. They were described as a remarkable feat of engineering with an ascending series of tiered gardens containing a wide variety of trees, shrubs, and vines, resembling a large green mountain constructed of mud bricks. It was said to have been built in the ancient city of Babylon , near present-day Hillah , Babil province, in Iraq . The Hanging Gardens' name

114-694: A city, but with the citadel still held by the former rulers, could by no means regard their tenure of power as secure. One such incident played an important part in the history of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire . The Hellenistic garrison of Jerusalem and local supporters of the Seleucids held out for many years in the Acra citadel, making Maccabean rule in the rest of Jerusalem precarious. When finally gaining possession of

171-539: A large number of small settlements (the castros ), but also settlements known as citadels or oppida by the Roman conquerors. These had several rings of walls and the Roman conquest of the citadels of Abobriga, Lambriaca and Cinania around 138 BC was possible only by prolonged siege . Ruins of notable citadels still exist, and are known by archaeologists as Citânia de Briteiros , Citânia de Sanfins , Cividade de Terroso and Cividade de Bagunte . Rebels who took power in

228-665: A romantic ideal of an eastern garden; second, that they existed in Babylon, but were destroyed sometime around the first century AD; and third, that the legend refers to a well-documented garden that the Assyrian King Sennacherib (704–681 BC) built in his capital city of Nineveh on the River Tigris , near the modern city of Mosul . There are five principal writers whose descriptions of Babylon exist in some form today. These writers concern themselves with

285-581: A short account entitled The Seven Sights of the World . The surviving manuscript is incomplete, missing its last pages. Still, from the preamble text, we can conclude that the list of seven sights exactly matches Antipater's (the preamble mentions the location of Halicarnassus, but the pages describing the seventh wonder, presumably the Mausoleum, are missing). Earlier and later lists by the historian Herodotus ( c.  484 BC– c.  425 BC) and

342-458: A vast system of aqueducts attributed to Sennacherib by an inscription on its remains, which Dalley proposes were part of an 80-kilometre (50 mi) series of canals, dams, and aqueducts used to carry water to Nineveh with water-raising screws used to raise it to the upper levels of the gardens. Dalley bases her arguments on recent developments in the analysis of contemporary Akkadian inscriptions. Her main points are: King Sennacherib's garden

399-476: Is A Handbook to the Seven Wonders of the World by the paradoxographer Philo of Byzantium, writing in the 4th to 5th century AD (not to be confused with the earlier engineer of the same name ). The method of raising water by screw matches that described by Strabo. Philo praises the engineering and ingenuity of building vast areas of deep soil, which had a tremendous mass, so far above the natural grade of

456-714: Is derived from the Greek word κρεμαστός ( kremastós , lit.   ' overhanging ' ), which has a broader meaning than the modern English word "hanging" and refers to trees being planted on a raised structure such as a terrace . According to one legend, the Hanging Gardens were built alongside a grand palace known as The Marvel of Mankind , by the Neo-Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II (who ruled between 605 and 562 BC), for his Median wife, Queen Amytis , because she missed

513-819: The British Museum in London. The listing of seven of the most marvellous architectural and artistic human achievements continued beyond the Ancient Greek times to the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and to the modern age. The Roman poet Martial and the Christian bishop Gregory of Tours had their versions. Reflecting the rise of Christianity and the factor of time, nature and

570-1031: The Colossus of Rhodes , the Lighthouse of Alexandria , the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus , the Temple of Artemis , the Statue of Zeus at Olympia , and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon . Using modern-day countries, two of the wonders were located in Greece, two in Turkey, two in Egypt, and one in Iraq. Of the seven wonders, only the Pyramid of Giza, which is also by far the oldest of the wonders, still remains standing, while

627-691: The Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions, which then comprised the known world for the Greeks. The primary accounts from Hellenistic writers also heavily influenced the places included in the wonders list. Five of the seven entries are a celebration of Greek accomplishments in construction, with the exceptions being the Pyramids of Giza and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Download coordinates as: The seven wonders on Antipater's list won praises for their notable features, ranging from superlatives of

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684-785: The Parc de la Ciutadella . A similar example is the Citadella in Budapest , Hungary. The attack on the Bastille in the French Revolution – though afterwards remembered mainly for the release of the handful of prisoners incarcerated there – was to considerable degree motivated by the structure's being a Royal citadel in the midst of revolutionary Paris. Similarly, after Garibaldi 's overthrow of Bourbon rule in Palermo , during

741-721: The Spanish Civil War , in which the Nationalists held out against a much larger Republican force for two months until relieved, shows that in some cases a citadel can be effective even in modern warfare; a similar case is the Battle of Huế during the Vietnam War , where a North Vietnamese Army division held the citadel of Huế for 26 days against roughly their own numbers of much better-equipped US and South Vietnamese troops. The Citadelle of Québec (the construction

798-521: The 1860 Unification of Italy , Palermo's Castellamare Citadel – a symbol of the hated and oppressive former rule – was ceremoniously demolished. Following Belgium gaining its independence in 1830, a Dutch garrison under General David Hendrik Chassé held out in Antwerp Citadel between 1830 and 1832, while the city had already become part of independent Belgium. The Siege of the Alcázar in

855-456: The 4th century BC texts of both Cleitarchus (a historian of Alexander the Great ) and Ctesias of Cnidus . Diodorus ascribes the construction to a "Syrian king". He states that the garden was in the shape of a square, with each side approximately four plethra long. The garden was tiered, with the uppermost gallery being 50 cubits high. The walls, 22 feet thick, were made of brick. The bases of

912-555: The Ancient World The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World , also known as the Seven Wonders of the World or simply the Seven Wonders , is a list of seven notable structures present during classical antiquity . The first known list of seven wonders dates back to the 2nd–1st century BC. While the entries have varied over the centuries, the seven traditional wonders are the Great Pyramid of Giza ,

969-586: The Hanging Gardens has not been proven, though theories abound. Records and archaeology confirm the existence of the other five wonders. The Temple of Artemis and the Statue of Zeus were destroyed by fire, while the Lighthouse of Alexandria, Colossus, and tomb of Mausolus were destroyed by earthquakes. Among the surviving artefacts are sculptures from the tomb of Mausolus and the Temple of Artemis, currently kept in

1026-457: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were actually the well-documented gardens constructed by the Assyrian king Sennacherib (reigned 704 – 681 BC) for his palace at Nineveh ; Dalley posits that during the intervening centuries the two sites became confused, and the extensive gardens at Sennacherib's palace were attributed to Nebuchadnezzar II's Babylon. Archaeological excavations have found traces of

1083-587: The Hanging Gardens. It is possible that evidence exists beneath the Euphrates, which cannot be excavated safely at present. The river flowed east of its current position during the time of Nebuchadnezzar II, and little is known about the western portion of Babylon. Rollinger has suggested that Berossus attributed the Gardens to Nebuchadnezzar for political reasons, and that he had adopted the legend from elsewhere. Oxford scholar Stephanie Dalley has proposed that

1140-409: The Middle Ages, etc. Its purpose has also changed from just a simple travel guidebook or a compendium of curious places to a list of sites to defend or preserve. Citadel In a fortification with bastions , the citadel is the strongest part of the system, sometimes well inside the outer walls and bastions, but often forming part of the outer wall for the sake of economy. It is positioned to be

1197-459: The Seven Wonders for which the location has not been definitively established. There are no extant Babylonian texts that mention the gardens, and no definitive archaeological evidence has been found in Babylon. Three theories have been suggested to account for this: first, that they were purely mythical, and the descriptions found in ancient Greek and Roman writings (including those of Strabo , Diodorus Siculus and Quintus Curtius Rufus ) represented

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1254-463: The actual sites to personally witness the wonders. Legends circulated to further complement the superlatives of the wonders. Of Antipater's wonders, the only one that has survived to the present day is the Great Pyramid of Giza. Its brilliant white stone facing had survived intact until around 1300 AD, when local communities removed most of the stonework for building materials. The existence of

1311-625: The boundaries of a country. These modern citadels are built to protect the command centre from heavy attacks, such as aerial or nuclear bombardment. The military citadels under London in the UK, including the massive underground complex Pindar beneath the Ministry of Defence , are examples, as is the Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker in the US. On armoured warships, the heavily armoured section of

1368-656: The city had fallen. For example, in the 1543 Siege of Nice the Ottoman forces led by Barbarossa conquered and pillaged the town and took many captives, but the citadel held out. In the Philippines , the Ivatan people of the northern islands of Batanes often built fortifications to protect themselves during times of war. They built their so-called idjangs on hills and elevated areas. These fortifications were likened to European castles because of their purpose. Usually,

1425-526: The construction of the Hanging Gardens. In this palace he erected very high walls, supported by stone pillars; and by planting what was called a pensile paradise, and replenishing it with all sorts of trees, he rendered the prospect an exact resemblance of a mountainous country. This he did to gratify his queen, because she had been brought up in Media, and was fond of a mountainous situation. Diodorus Siculus (active c.  60–30 BC ) seems to have consulted

1482-582: The environmental characteristics of the area, some of the following plants may have been found in the gardens: Imported plant varieties that may have been present in the gardens include the cedar , cypress , ebony , pomegranate , plum , rosewood , terebinth , juniper , oak , ash tree , fir , myrrh , walnut , and willow . Some of these plants were suspended over the terraces and draped over its walls with arches underneath. 32°32′08″N 44°25′39″E  /  32.5355°N 44.4275°E  / 32.5355; 44.4275 Seven Wonders of

1539-473: The garden in its maturity. One original panel and the drawing of another are held by the British Museum , although neither is on public display. Several features mentioned by the classical authors are discernible on these contemporary images. Of Sennacherib's palace, he mentions the massive limestone blocks that reinforce the flood defences. Parts of the palace were excavated by Austin Henry Layard in

1596-437: The gardens were said to still exist at the time that later writers described them, and some of these accounts are regarded as deriving from people who had visited Babylon. Herodotus , who describes Babylon in his Histories , does not mention the Hanging Gardens, although it could be that the gardens were not yet well known to the Greeks at the time of his visit. To date, no archaeological evidence has been found at Babylon for

1653-663: The god and a royal palace . The most well known is the Acropolis of Athens , but nearly every Greek city-state had one – the Acrocorinth is famed as a particularly strong fortress. In a much later period, when Greece was ruled by the Latin Empire , the same strong points were used by the new feudal rulers for much the same purpose. In the first millennium BC, the Castro culture emerged in northwestern Portugal and Spain in

1710-464: The green hills and valleys of her homeland. This was attested to by the Babylonian priest Berossus , writing in about 290 BC, a description that was later quoted by Josephus . The construction of the Hanging Gardens has also been attributed to the legendary queen Semiramis and they have been called the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis as an alternative name. The Hanging Gardens are the only one of

1767-542: The hand of man overcoming Antipater's seven wonders, Roman and Christian sites began to figure on the list, including the Colosseum , Noah's Ark , and Solomon's Temple . In the 6th century, a list of seven wonders was compiled by St. Gregory of Tours : the list included the Temple of Solomon, the Pharos of Alexandria , and Noah's Ark. Modern historians, working on the premise that the original Seven Ancient Wonders List

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1824-535: The highest or largest of their types, to the artistry with which they were executed. Their architectural and artistic features were imitated throughout the Hellenistic world and beyond. The Greek influence in Roman culture, and the revival of Greco-Roman artistic styles during the Renaissance caught the imagination of European artists and travellers. Paintings and sculptures alluding to Antipater's list were made, while significant numbers of adventurers travelled to

1881-412: The landmarks and marvels of the various lands, these travellers began to list what they saw to remember them. Instead of "wonders", the ancient Greeks spoke of " theamata " (θεάματα), which means "sights", in other words "things to be seen" (Τὰ ἑπτὰ θεάματα τῆς οἰκουμένης [γῆς] Tà heptà theámata tēs oikoumenēs [gēs] ). Later, the word for "wonder" (" thaumata " θαύματα, "wonders") was used. Hence,

1938-532: The last line of defence, should the enemy breach the other components of the fortification system. Some of the oldest known structures which have served as citadels were built by the Indus Valley civilisation , where citadels represented a centralised authority. Citadels in Indus Valley were almost 12 meters tall. The purpose of these structures, however, remains debated. Though the structures found in

1995-401: The list was meant to be the Ancient World's counterpart of a travel guidebook. The first reference to a list of seven such monuments was given by Diodorus Siculus . The epigrammist Antipater of Sidon , who lived around or before 100 BC, gave a list of seven "wonders", including six of the present list (substituting the walls of Babylon for the Lighthouse of Alexandria): I have gazed on

2052-400: The mid-19th century. His citadel plan shows contours which would be consistent with Sennacherib's garden, but its position has not been confirmed. The area has been used as a military base in recent times, making it difficult to investigate further. The irrigation of such a garden demanded an upgraded water supply to the city of Nineveh. The canals stretched over 50 kilometres (31 mi) into

2109-410: The mountains. Sennacherib was proud of the technologies he had employed and describes them in some detail on his inscriptions. At the headwater of Bavian ( Khinnis ) his inscription mentions automatic sluice gates. An enormous aqueduct crossing the valley at Jerwan was constructed of over two million dressed stones. It used stone arches and waterproof cement. On it is written: Sennacherib king of

2166-437: The only entrance to the castles would be via a rope ladder that would only be lowered for the villagers and could be kept away when invaders arrived. In times of war, the citadel in many cases afforded retreat to the people living in the areas around the town. However, citadels were often used also to protect a garrison or political power from the inhabitants of the town where it was located, being designed to ensure loyalty from

2223-457: The others have been destroyed over the centuries. There is scholarly debate over the exact nature of the Hanging Gardens, and there is doubt as to whether they existed at all. Alexander the Great 's conquest of much of the western world in the 4th century BC gave Hellenistic travellers access to the civilizations of the Egyptians , Persians , and Babylonians . Impressed and captivated by

2280-704: The place, the Maccabeans pointedly destroyed and razed the Acra, though they constructed another citadel for their own use in a different part of Jerusalem. At various periods, and particularly during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance , the citadel – having its own fortifications, independent of the city walls – was the last defence of a besieged army, often held after the town had been conquered. Locals and defending armies have often held out citadels long after

2337-487: The poet Callimachus of Cyrene ( c.  305 –240 BC), housed at the Museum of Alexandria , survive only as references. The Colossus of Rhodes was the last of the seven to be completed after 280 BC and the first to be destroyed by an earthquake in 226/225 BC. As such, it was already in ruins by the time the list was compiled, and all seven wonders existed simultaneously for less than 60 years. The list covered only

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2394-399: The reason that his queen missed her homeland. The account of Strabo ( c.  64 BC – 21 AD ) possibly based his description on the lost account of Onesicritus from the 4th century BC. He states that the gardens were watered by means of an Archimedes' screw leading to the gardens from the Euphrates river. The last of the classical sources thought to be independent of the others

2451-623: The region extending from the Douro river up to the Minho , but soon expanding north along the coast, and east following the river valleys. It was an autochthonous evolution of Atlantic Bronze Age communities. In 2008, the origins of the Celts were attributed to this period by John T. Koch and supported by Barry Cunliffe . The Ave River Valley in Portugal was the core region of this culture, with

2508-527: The ruins of Mohenjo-daro were walled, it is far from clear that these structures were defensive against enemy attacks. Rather, they may have been built to divert flood waters. Several settlements in Anatolia , including the Assyrian city of Kaneš in modern-day Kültepe , featured citadels. Kaneš' citadel contained the city's palace, temples, and official buildings. The citadel of the Greek city of Mycenae

2565-436: The ship that protects the ammunition and machinery spaces is called the armoured citadel . A modern naval interpretation refers to the heaviest protected part of the hull as "the vitals", and the citadel is the semi-armoured freeboard above the vitals. Generally, Anglo-American and German languages follow this while Russian sources/language refer to "the vitals" as цитадель "citadel". Likewise, Russian literature often refers to

2622-405: The size of the Hanging Gardens, their overall design and means of irrigation , and why they were built. Josephus ( c.  37–100 AD ) quotes a description of the gardens by Berossus , a Babylonian priest of Marduk , whose writing c.  290 BC is the earliest known mention of the gardens. Berossus described the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II and is the only source to credit that king with

2679-510: The surrounding land, as well as the irrigation techniques. It is unclear whether the Hanging Gardens were an actual construction or a poetic creation, owing to the lack of documentation in contemporaneous Babylonian sources. There is also no mention of Nebuchadnezzar's wife Amyitis (or any other wives), although a political marriage to a Median or Persian would not have been unusual. Many records exist of Nebuchadnezzar's works, yet his long and complete inscriptions do not mention any garden. However,

2736-417: The tiered sections were sufficiently deep to provide root growth for the largest trees, and the gardens were irrigated from the nearby Euphrates . Quintus Curtius Rufus (fl. 1st century AD) probably drew on the same sources as Diodorus. He states that the gardens were located on top of a citadel , which was 20 stadia in circumference. He attributes the building of the gardens to a "Syrian king", again for

2793-525: The town as well as on the sea approaches. Barcelona had a great citadel built in 1714 to intimidate the Catalans against repeating their mid-17th- and early-18th-century rebellions against the Spanish central government. In the 19th century, when the political climate had liberalized enough to permit it, the people of Barcelona had the citadel torn down, and replaced it with the city's main central park,

2850-609: The town that they defended. This was used, for example, during the Dutch Wars of 1664–1667, King Charles II of England constructed a Royal Citadel at Plymouth , an important channel port which needed to be defended from a possible naval attack. However, due to Plymouth's support for the Parliamentarians , in the then-recent English Civil War , the Plymouth Citadel was so designed that its guns could fire on

2907-750: The walls of impregnable Babylon along which chariots may race, and on the Zeus by the banks of the Alpheus, I have seen the hanging gardens, and the Colossus of the Helios, the great man-made mountains of the lofty pyramids, and the gigantic tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the sacred house of Artemis that towers to the clouds, the others were placed in the shade, for the sun himself has never looked upon its equal outside Olympus. Another ancient writer, who, perhaps dubiously, identified himself as Philo of Byzantium , wrote

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2964-459: The world king of Assyria. Over a great distance I had a watercourse directed to the environs of Nineveh, joining together the waters.... Over steep-sided valleys I spanned an aqueduct of white limestone blocks, I made those waters flow over it. Sennacherib claimed that he had built a "Wonder for all Peoples", and said he was the first to deploy a new casting technique in place of the "lost-wax" process for his monumental (30 tonne) bronze castings. He

3021-580: Was able to bring the water into his garden at a high level because it was sourced from further up in the mountains, and he then raised the water even higher by deploying his new water screws. This meant he could build a garden that towered above the landscape with large trees on the top of the terraces – a stunning artistic effect that surpassed those of his predecessors. The gardens, as depicted in artworks, featured blossoming flowers, ripe fruit, burbling waterfalls and terraces exuberant with rich foliage. Based on Babylonian literature, tradition, and

3078-409: Was built atop a highly-defensible rectangular hill and was later surrounded by walls in order to increase its defensive capabilities. In Ancient Greece , the Acropolis , which literally means "high city", placed on a commanding eminence, was important in the life of the people, serving as a lookout, a refuge, and a stronghold in peril, as well as containing military and food supplies, the shrine of

3135-400: Was limited in its geographic scope, also had their versions to encompass sites beyond the Hellenistic realm—from the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World to the Seven Wonders of the World . The "seven wonders" label has spawned innumerable versions among international organizations, publications and individuals based on different themes—works of nature, engineering masterpieces, constructions of

3192-427: Was started in 1673 and completed in 1820) still survives as the largest citadel still in official military operation in North America . It is home to the Royal 22nd Regiment of the Canadian Army and forms part of the Ramparts of Quebec City dating back to 1620s. Since the mid 20th century, citadels have commonly enclosed military command and control centres, rather than cities or strategic points of defence on

3249-632: Was well-known not just for its beauty – a year-round oasis of lush green in a dusty summer landscape – but also for the marvelous feats of water engineering that maintained the garden. There was a tradition of Assyrian royal garden building. King Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BC) had created a canal, which cut through the mountains. Fruit tree orchards were planted. Also mentioned were pines, cypresses and junipers; almond trees, date trees, ebony, rosewood, olive, oak, tamarisk, walnut, terebinth, ash, fir, pomegranate, pear, quince, fig, and grapes. A sculptured wall panel of Assurbanipal shows

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