Belvoir Castle is a Crusader castle in northern Israel, on a hill on the eastern edge of the Issachar Plateau, on the edge of Lower Galilee 20 kilometres south of the Sea of Galilee. Gilbert of Assailly, Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, began construction of the castle in 1168. The restored castle is located in Belvoir National Park (a.k.a. Jordan Star National Park). It is one of the best-preserved Crusader castle in Israel.
Standing 500 metres above the Jordan River Valley level, the plateau commanded the route from Gilead into the Kingdom of Jerusalem via a nearby river crossing. The site of the castle dominated the surrounding area.
The Hebrew name, Kochav Hayarden, meaning Star of the Jordan, preserves the name of Kochava – a Jewish village which existed nearby during the Roman and Byzantine periods.
The Knights Hospitaller purchased the site from Velos, a French nobleman, in 1168. As soon as the Knights Hospitaller purchased the land, they began construction of castle. While Gilbert of Assailly was Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, the order gained around thirteen new castles, among which Belvoir was the most important. The castle of Belvoir served as a major obstacle to the Muslim goal of invading the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem from the east. It withstood an attack by Muslim forces in 1180. During the campaign of 1182, the Battle of Belvoir Castle was fought nearby between King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Saladin.
Following Saladin's victory over the Crusaders at the Battle of Hattin, Belvoir was besieged. The siege lasted a year and a half, until the defenders surrendered on 5 January 1189. An Arab governor occupied it until 1219 when the Ayyubid ruler in Damascus had it slighted. In 1241 Belvoir was ceded to the Franks, who controlled it until 1263.
Excavations in the 1960s demonstrated the complex nature of early military architecture in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Belvoir's design bore similarities to that of a Roman castrum: the inner enclosure was rectangular with towers at the corners, and large gatehouse in the middle of one wall, in this case the west.
Belvoir is an early example of the concentric castle plan, which was widely used in later crusader castles. The castle was highly symmetric, with a rectangular outer wall, reinforced with square towers at the corners and on each side, surrounding a square inner enclosure with four corner towers and one on the west wall. Vaults on the inner side of both walls provided storage and protection during bombardments. The castle was surrounded by a moat 20 metres wide and 12 metres deep.
References:Rosenborg Palace was built in the period 1606-34 as Christian IV’s summerhouse just outside the ramparts of Copenhagen. Christian IV was very fond of the palace and often stayed at the castle when he resided in Copenhagen, and it was here that he died in 1648. After his death, the palace passed to his son King Frederik III, who together with his queen, Sophie Amalie, carried out several types of modernisation.
The last king who used the place as a residence was Frederik IV, and around 1720, Rosenborg was abandoned in favor of Frederiksborg Palace.Through the 1700s, considerable art treasures were collected at Rosenborg Castle, among other things items from the estates of deceased royalty and from Christiansborg after the fire there in 1794.
Soon the idea of a museum arose, and that was realised in 1833, which is The Royal Danish Collection’s official year of establishment.