Fortress Capalna, Transilvania

Fortress Capalna - details and images

Dacian Fortress in communion Capalna Sasciori, 18 km from the town of Sebes, "Deal Gargalau" or "Castle Hill", as it is called, with a good strategic position, situated at 610m altitude overlooking the valley and Sebes, a city stone walls in the opposite quadratum that Preheat top of the hill, the rest being related to the heights with a narrow and is bordered by two streams: Stream Valley Gargalaului and Fastest.

Plateau city, consists of three terraces, the small size, oval, measuring 56X42m. Access from the south-west was crossed with a wave of earth, not too high, equipped with an internal ditch.

Capalna Dacian Fortress is one of the links in the chain of fortifications on both sides of the Carpathians, designed to monitor the main roads crossing the mountains on the realm circulated at all times. Banita Capalna and two cities are included in UNESCO as part of the Dacian defensive system, but not in Orastiei mountains, the center of the kingdom.

Fortification, located in the border village Capalna, Alba, on a steep hillside with maximum elevation of 687 meters, came relatively late in the literature, namely, the end of last century. Toponym "Fortress" indicated that residents had long been aware of the existence of the ruins. The upper part of the nipple, arranged in terraces, is defended by a tower-house from which starts wall.

Tower-house is in front of the saddle, on a platform cut into the rock, is square (of side wall thickness of 9.5 m and 1.73 m) and has input on the SE side (1.26 m wide). From 1.7 m up the wall type Dacicus murus continues for approx. 3m in low burnt brick.

Unevenly inside wall thickness (from 1.5 m to 2.5 m) is now preserved most of its length with only one parament (outer). Parament inside was substituted in the bottom of the wall rock and limestone blocks up from only from some height, with a perimeter of the city (and a side wall of the tower-house), which measures 280m.

The main entrance was through the tower in the city (6 x 9m on the outside) on the side of S. On the U.S. side is a secondary entrance flanked by two walls. Inside the fortress stood several buildings: the highest terrace, a wooden lookout tower, a building with wooden walls and the stone house near the tower, a staircase with stone base, a channel and several wooden shacks .

Archaeological material consists of handmade pottery and the wheel (including painted with geometric patterns), iron tools, objects of adornment from iron, silver and bronze, bronze vessels, republican and imperial Roman coins. Dacian fortress seems to have been built during the reign of Burebista.

He ceased to exist by a fire scale during the Daco-Roman wars of the early century. 2 AD its strategic mission was to bar access road, from Polovragi, crossed the mountains by Step Urdea and down Somes Valley. Limestone blocks used for raising the tower and the castle walls have been fashioned in his career and Capalna were also made only minor adjustments.

Wall height is approx. 1.7 meters and continued down the brick, as if the tower-house Costesti - fortress. The manner of placing the tower on the route of the wall and forming an exit from this building demonstrates the double purpose: defense element, surrounded by other fortifications, and, on the other hand, home of the commander of the fortress.

The main element is the strengthening of the fortress wall inside Capalna which starts perpendicularly from the SE and NW sides of the tower-house. Part of the wall was built in stone, it being previously cut to allow construction on a slope of about 70 degrees to the hill slopes. The state in which the walls were preserved cities is worse than the Orastie Mountains: the blocks are slipped or protruding, and in many parts of the wall has not kept place.

Information source