The world’s greatest defensive works awe — yet all are now obsolete. We visit: Gibraltar, Constantinople, Luxemburg, Przemysl, Poznan, and Verdun – the site of WWI’s longest, but not the most horrible battle. Why were they built and defended – and how did they fall?
These fortifications include a-mountain-turned-fortress — Gibraltar — which once guarded the passage between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Its ancillary fortifications are massive by themselves,
Another fortification date back some two millennia. They guarded the wealthiest city of the ancient world — Constantinople. They still stand.
The “Stalingrad” of the First World War is virtually unknown to the West. The huge fortress of Przemyśl was heavily fortified in order to stop Germany and Russia from going through Southern Poland, then through the Carpathian passes, into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There were some million casualties in the two sieges of the fortress.