Giovanni Girolamo Sanmicheli and Luigi Brugnoli’s design for Famagusta city walls, Cyprus (1550-1562)

The Lusignans built a first walled enclosure at Famagusta in the XII-XIV cent. After the Genoese seize of the city in 1372 and the Venetian conquest of the island in 1489, many military engineers arrived from Italy to transform the city walls. Starting with the citadel built by Nicolo Foscarini in 1482, different interventions were accomplished through time. The construction of the west side of the Venetian walls is clearly dated on the Moratto bastion where a slab records the construction by Nicolo Prioli in 1486, “Nicolao Prioli Cypri Praefecto MCCCCLXXXXVI”. The Limassol bastion was finished in 1541, introducing the new Ravelin defence (Lorini, 1609). Giovanni Girolamo Sanmicheli, nephew of the famous designer of Verona’s fortifications, arrived in Famagusta in 1550 (Vasari, 1568) and started working on the enforcement of the city walls. The port of Famagusta was strategic for the control of the eastern sea-routes, in danger of the Ottoman conquer. The paper will focus on Sanimicheli’s project comparing it with his other projects, such as the fortresses of Zara, Corfu, and the fort S. Nicolò at the entrance of Sebenico Gulf and the coeval literature on military architecture. After his death in Famagusta at the age of 44 in 1558, on suspect of murder (Milizia, 1768), the defence works were continued by Luigi Brugnoli and completed in 1562 before the Ottomans conquered the city in 1571.