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City Walls

In 1567, just before the conquest of Cyprus by the Ottomans, the Venetians started to build new walls in place of the old Lusignan walls ringing the city, so as to be able to defend Nicosia. A famous Venetian engineer named Guilio Savorgnano drew the plans of the walls. The walls have a circumference of three miles, eleven bastions each like a castle, and three gates. The walls consisted of earth ramparts with a stone facing. The names of the gates were: "Porta Del Proveditore - The Kyrenia Gate" in the North, " Porta Guiliana - The Famagusta Gate" in the East, and " Porta Domenica - The Paphos Gate" in the West. In order to build the walls, the Venetians demolished the houses, palaces, monasteries and churches outside the three-mile circumference of the city and used their stone in the construction of the walls. The bastions were named after the nobilities and other people who contributed to the construction of the walls (Rochas, Loredano, Barbaro). The Venetians were defeated by the Ottomans before they had time to finish the construction of the walls.