Fort Jesus

Fort Jesus overlooks the entrance to Mombasa's Old Port on the coast of Kenya, built by the Portuguese between 1593 and 1596 to a design by the Italian military architect Giovanni Battista Cairati to secure their trading position on the Swahili coast. Laid out in the shape of a man when viewed from above, a form associated with the fort's dedication, its coral-stone bastions were built to the star-shaped fortification principles then current in European military engineering. Control of the fort changed hands repeatedly over the following centuries between the Portuguese, Omani Arabs and the British, who used it as a prison in the colonial period, reflecting the shifting powers that contested the East African coast. UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in 2011.