Gatehouse

A gatehouse is a fortified gateway, an entry control building that protects the approach to a castle, town or manor house. Despite guarding what was structurally the weakest point in a fortification and the likeliest place for an enemy to attack, a gatehouse was often the most heavily armed part of the whole complex, built with defenses such as a drawbridge, a portcullis, machicolations, arrow loops and murder holes, and in some castles it served as the fortress's main stronghold, known as a gatehouse keep. The type goes back to antiquity, with the Ishtar Gate at Babylon among its earliest famous examples, and the Romans later built fortified gates across their walled towns in Europe. By the late Middle Ages, many English and French gatehouses had shed most of their military role and become monumental, decorative entrances built to harmonize with the manor or mansion behind them, and surviving examples stand today in France, Austria, Germany, England and Japan.