Krak des Chevaliers

Krak des Chevaliers is a castle in Syria, a country in Asia.

It is made of stone. It stands on top of a high hill. From far away, you can see its thick walls and big round towers.

Krak des Chevaliers stands on a high ridge near the village of Al Hosn, in western Syria. Its name is French: chevaliers means knights. Today it is called Qal'at al-Hosn.

The castle was built in the Middle Ages, the time of the Crusades, when armies from Europe came to this region. A group of knights called the Hospitallers made it into the castle we see today, and later rulers called the Mamluks added to it. UNESCO, the United Nations agency that protects important places, says it is seen as the best-preserved castle of that time.

The castle crowns a high ridge in the municipality of Al Hosn, in Homs Governorate, a site UNESCO describes as a key defensive position; the protected core zone covers 2.38 hectares, enclosing only the castle, with a buffer zone of 37.69 hectares around it. Its present Arabic name is Qal'at al-Hosn.

UNESCO inscribed it in 2006 together with Qal'at Salah El-Din, a second fortress in Syria, as the two most significant examples of how fortified architecture developed in the Near East during the Byzantine, Crusader and Islamic periods. Its criterion text says Krak is taken as the best-preserved example of a castle of the Crusader period and seen as an archetype of the medieval castle of the military orders.

Count the round towers! The outer wall has eight of them.

The towers have thin slits in the walls. Inside are big stone halls.

The outer wall has eight round towers along its north and west sides. Each tower has narrow slits, called loops, that defenders could look and shoot through.

Inside the castle are large halls. For many years they were half buried in soil, until restorers dug them out in the 20th century. At the south end of the inner castle stand three great round towers. They held the finest rooms in the castle and also served as a refuge, a safe place to shelter.

Key features named in the ICOMOS evaluation are the eight round towers of the outer curtain, with their loops; the bent, vaulted entrance ramp from the eastern gate; the glacis, called the "Mountain"; the Mamluk square tower of 1285 on the south side; and the southern stronghold of three round towers with the castle's finest apartments.

Restorations under the French Mandate freed the large halls from accumulated soil, revealing their original spaces, repaired the external walls and gave the courtyards damp-proof paving to protect the spaces beneath. UNESCO notes that the castle has well retained its authenticity, and that the eastern slopes need protecting from the growth of the nearby modern town.

The castle sits on top of a green hill.

A path winds around it. Hills and fields stretch far away behind it.

In the photo, the castle sits on a green ridge with hills behind it. A path curves around the slope below its walls, and on the right is a row of stone arches.

When it was listed in 2006, the castle belonged to the state of Syria and was looked after by the country's antiquities department together with the nearby village of Al Hosn. A buffer zone of open land around it, especially on the north side, limits new building near the castle.

At inscription, the castle's core zone was state-owned and managed by Syria's Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) with the village of al-Hosn. In the buffer zone around it, which covers the open landscape especially on the north side, new building was banned in one sub-zone and limited to two or three stories in the others.

In the photo, a road loops around the slope below the outer walls, round and square towers rise above them, and a line of stone arches stands at the right, with green hills beyond. Since 2013 the site has been on UNESCO's List of World Heritage in Danger.