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La localidad que vio nacer al navegante Juan Sebastián Elkano

Ground front walls

Is the belt of walls built in Getaria during the modern era, in order to expand and adapt fortified its defenses to new methods of siege. It had two main alignments: Sea front walls overlooking the harbour and ground front walls parallel to Mount Garate and originally preceded by a moat. Today we can still see, in the wreckage of Ground front walls, mostly demolished in the late nineteenth century, several items of interest:

  • Segment cloth wall (or curtain), side wall reused as the pediment. The most significant sight is the rear, facing the Tower Aldamar. Here we can see one of the four gates in the wall of early sixteenth century. Originally this wall had two circular cubes each located at one end.
  • The bulwark designed by Antonio Gandolfo after the battle of Getaria (1638) and completed by the end of the seventeenth century. Its purpose was to adapt the fortifications that by the early seventeenth century, demonstrated to be insufficient to address the progress of artillery and the danger of the proximity of Mount Garate. The bastion itself proved useful against offensive actions suffered during the War of the Convention (1794), War of Independence (1808-1814) and Carlist siege of 1835-1836 and the last Carlist War (1872-1876). Today appears disfigured by the transformations suffered, since 1922, to serve as the basis Elkano monument.