The fortifications of Rhodes are shaped like a defensive crescent around the medieval city and consist of a huge stone wall, equipped with an escarpment, bastions, a ditch, a counter-scarp and a glacis. The part of the fortifications facing the harbor, instead, consists of a battlement. On the piers are towers and defensive forts. They were built by the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John, reinforcing the existing Byzantine walls, starting in 1309, the year they captured the island after a three-year struggle.→