A hill town is any citadel town built upon hills to make invasion difficult. Often protected by defensive walls, steep embankments, or cliffs, such hilltop settlements provided natural defenses for their inhabitants.
In Europe, especially in Italy, Spain, Portugal and southern France, such towns were common.
The Spanish even brought the traditional European hill town to the Americas, a notable example being the 16th century Mexican hill town of Guanajuato. However, fortified hill towns were by no means solely a European creation. For instance, Incan fortified hill towns predated the arrival of the Spanish by many centuries and rival those of Europe. Machu Picchu, an Incan hill town completed in the mid-15th century in Peru, although now in ruins, is considered perhaps the most beautiful hill town ever constructed. Construction of fortified hill towns was common in many civilizations. Ancient examples can also be found in Africa and Asia.
Famous quotes containing the words hill and/or town:
“The hill farmer ... always seems to make out somehow with his corn patch, his few vegetables, his rifle, and fishing rod. This self-contained economy creates in the hillman a comparative disinterest in the world’s affairs, along with a disdain of lowland ways. “I don’t go to question the good Lord in his wisdom,” runs the phrasing attributed to a typical mountaineer, “but I jest cain’t see why He put valleys in between the hills.””
—Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Keen instruments, strung to a vast precision
Bind town to town and dream to ticking dream.”
—Hart Crane (1899–1932)