posted 05-10-2002 08:16 PM            

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There are some castles that have three walls, but not directly behind eachother. These walls were built as the castle grew and needed to(or could) expand.

As for walls built directly behind eachother, I have never come across one. The walls of Constantinople(Byznatium, Istanbul) are the only triple walls I know of.

I can think of a couple of reasons they were not common.
Firstly, if you had two walls, that was generally enough and you didn't get much extra protection from the effort and cost of building a third. Extra effort was generally expended on earthworks(moats, ditches, mounds and holes) outside the walls instead.

Secondly, the outside wall of a set was always shorter than the inside wall to allow defenders on the inner wall to shoot over the outer wall, and also to have an advantage over it if it was breached or taken. This would mean that a third wall, having to be shorter than the second, would either be very short, or the other two walls would have to be built higher at great extra cost.
In fact, the third wall at Constantinople is very short, but was once preceded by a large moat.

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