Fitzgerald sets the scene by describing a "large, proud rose-colored hotel" with a dazzling beach: "In the early morning the distant image of Cannes, the pink and cream of early fortifications, and the purple Alp that bounded Italy, were cast across the water and lay quavering in the ripples and rings sent up by sea-plants through the clear shallows".
Of the early fortifications, the Deutsches Tor ("German Gate") remains, as do the ruins of a fortress built in 1688 91 by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, the French military engineer.
The earliest fortification was with vitamin D, the so-called sunshine vitamin, and acted as a marketing tool.
The earliest fortification of Taunton started for King Ine of Wessex and Æthelburg, in or about the year 710 AD.
This derives from the name of an earlier fortification on the site called Ḥoṣn al-Akrād, meaning "fort of the Kurds".
Ramparts and ditches to the south of the present castle may be the site of an earlier fortification, as the name Doune, derived from Gaelic dùn, meaning "fort", suggests.
Situated on the site of earlier fortifications, it lies on the right bank of the Yamuna River and is connected to another of Agra's renowned monuments, the Taj Mahal (downstream, around a bend in the Yamuna), by a swath of parkland and gardens.
This Renaissance architecture seems to mask earlier fortifications, the towers of which rise behind the differing classical façades.
The earliest fortifications originated in the Fertile Crescent, the Indus Valley, Egypt, and China where settlements were protected by large walls.
This contrasts with earlier fortifications, such as Anglo Saxon burhs and walled cities such as Constantinople and Antioch in the Middle East; castles were not communal defences but were built and owned by the local feudal lords, either for themselves or for their monarch.
