City Walls

The longest Wall “job” ever, was the 3,500 mile Great Wall of China (which we haven’t seen), but the effort and materials consumed to build all the walls in Europe (and there are thousands), must exceed the requirements of the Great Wall.

A few miles north of Dubrovnik, the little town, Ston, sets at water level, and is connected by a city wall, that while it doesn’t seem to protect anything, runs up over a high hill to the town of Mali Ston (little Ston). After the Great Wall of China, this is said to be the longest preserved wall in the world.

Not all stone walls surround and protect a town. In Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy, and in other places, we have seen small stone walls, walls that are merely a place to store an accumulation of larger stones. From the air, some Adriatic islands present a latticed panorama, almost completely covered with walls that divide the meager soil into tiny plots.

If the walls of Carcassonne, France, and Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, aren’t the greatest, they are at least two of the very best. Carcassonne’s double wall (about 50 yards apart) and fifty-two towers are floodlit every night of the year, a sight to behold.

While walking on Dubrovnik's 9th-century city wall one year, the wind blew Emmy blue sun-visor far to the ground below. I climbed and walked and retrieved it, and Emmy still wears that visor. I had purchased two blue visors in Athens, but lost one in the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.

Lucca, Italy, was founded several centuries BC. Its first wall was built in BC times, this third wall was developed about the time Columbus discovered America. We would guess the wall is three to four stories high, but unlike most other walls we’ve seen, is perhaps thirty yards wide on top, with a street, lawn, and large trees, including flowering magnolia trees.

Imagine the millions of man-years spent building walls, gates, fortresses, palaces, and cathedrals one and two thousand years ago. Those huge buildings, and walls with defensive features, sometimes took hundreds of years to build. But what else was there to do? There has always been a need for housing, clothing, and food, but no one spent their time assembling automobiles, airplanes, televisions, computers, and telephone systems, there were no Wal Marts, Sears Roebucks, or Macy’s to keep millions of people employed.