Description

In 1807 Ali Pasha found it almost derelict and proceeded with several interventions. It controlled the city’s harbour. The castle was surrounded by the moat (tabya), an undertaking of Ali Pasha, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The castle is an oblong quadrilateral fort with four corner bastions and one of a smaller size in the middle of the western side.

Its fortification stands almost parallel to the sea at relatively close proximity to it. Despite successive interventions, the surrounding wall of the fort has retained, almost unaltered, its initial position and form. Its external features are easily visible: its inclined construction, the perfect geometry of the corner bastions, the improved system for sidelong fire and the peripheral improved constructions, such as the outworks and the accesses. The castle is preserved today to a quite good extent.