Citadel of Jülich

The citadel of Juliers is a former military structure built in the eleventh century. It is now disused.

The citadel of Juliers was part of the fortress of Juliers. It is the main preserved monument of the city and one of the best-preserved fortresses of the bastioned system in Germany. It was built in the years 1545 as an integral part of an ideal Renaissance city and is the oldest citadel north of the Alps. Its master builder was Alessandro Pasqualini. It is now a bastioned fortress with four points with a circumference of about 1200 meters. The citadel is surrounded by a moat ten metres deep and 20 to 30 metres wide, partially filled with water, from the bottom of which it rises. The entire installation still exceeds its surroundings by about five to ten meters. Access from the town side has been for some years via the Pasqualini bridge, over the moat, through a postern. From the north, the inner courtyard is also accessed through such a tunnel; only here the ditch is not spanned by a bridge, but by a dike.

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