Minas Tirith

It is a seven-walled fortress city built on the spur of a mountain, rising some 700 feet to a high terrace, housing the Citadel, at the seventh level.

Scholars, following various leads in Tolkien's fantasy and letters, have attempted to identify Minas Tirith with several different historical or mythical cities, including Troy, Rome, Ravenna, and Constantinople.

In Peter Jackson's film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, Minas Tirith was given something of the look of a city of the Byzantine empire, while its seven-tiered shape was suggested by the tidal island and abbey of Mont Saint-Michel in France.

Tolkien illustrators including Alan Lee, John Howe, Jef Murray, and Ted Nasmith have all produced realistic paintings of the city.

The White Tower, at the city's highest level with a commanding view of the lower vales of Anduin, stood in the Citadel, 700 feet higher than the surrounding plains, protected by the seventh and innermost wall atop the spur.

Scholars, following various leads in Tolkien's fantasy and letters, have identified Minas Tirith with several different historical or mythical cities, including Troy, Rome, Ravenna, and Constantinople.

"[T 5] Michael Livingston comments in Mythlore that Minas Tirith resembled Troy in having "impregnable walls", and in being subjected to a siege that seemed to threaten civilisation.

[4] Further, in Livingston's opinion, the Steward Denethor's two sons, Boromir and Faramir, play the roles of Hector in Homer's Iliad, "the heroic example of martial, mortal man", and of Paris, the younger brother "little loved by [his father]", in "asterisk" form, as they might have been.

[4] Tolkien's map-notes for the illustrator Pauline Baynes indicate that Minas Tirith had the latitude of Ravenna, an Italian city on the Adriatic Sea, though it lay "900 miles east of Hobbiton more near Belgrade".

[7][8] The Tolkien scholar Judy Ann Ford writes that there is an architectural connection with Ravenna in Pippin's description of the great hall of Denethor, which in her view suggests a Germanic myth of a restored Roman Empire.

[11] She comments that Tolkien's account echoes the decline and fall of Rome, but "with a happy ending", as it "somehow withstood the onslaught of armies from the east, and ... was restored to glory.

Both realms were threatened by powerful eastern and southern enemies: the Byzantines by the Sassanid Persians and the Muslim armies of the Arabs and the Turks, as well as the Langobards and Goths; Gondor by the Easterlings, the Haradrim, and the hordes of Sauron.

It was dry and dead throughout the centuries that Gondor was ruled by the Stewards; Aragorn brought a young living sapling of the White Tree into the city on his return as King, symbolising the rebirth of the monarchy.

[13][16][14] Lisa Anne Mende, in Mythlore, contrasts the happy eucatastrophes which rescue Minas Tirith in The Lord of the Rings – the last-minute arrivals of the Riders of Rohan, and then of Aragorn in the enemy's ships – with the unmitigated disasters of the Fall of Gondolin and the other Elvish cities of Beleriand in The Silmarillion.

[23] In Tuthill's view, the most "fully rendered and realistic-looking" painting is Nasmith's Gandalf Rides to Minas Tirith, with a "wholly convincing city" in the background, majestic as the Wizard gallops towards it in the dawn light.

Lee chooses instead to look within Minas Tirith, showing "the same glimmering spires and white stone", a guard standing in the foreground in place of Gandalf and his horse; his painting gives a feeling of "how massive the city is", with close attention to the late Romanesque or early Gothic architectural detail and perspective.

Minas Tirith's towering stone hall of Ecthelion has been compared to Ravenna 's 6th century Basilica of San Vitale . [ 3 ]
Aeneas escaped the ruin of Troy to become a hero of Rome, as Elendil escaped Númenor to found Minas Tirith. [ 10 ] Painting by Federico Barocci , 1598
Tolkien called Minas Tirith a " Byzantine City":
that empire's capital was Constantinople (shown). [ 12 ]
The lifeless White Tree of Gondor has been compared to the Dry Tree (pictured) of medieval legend. [ 13 ] Manuscript illustration dated 1444 of the Dry Tree (centre) with the Phoenix , flanked by the Trees of the Sun and the Moon . Both the Dry Tree and the Phoenix are symbols of resurrection and new life. Rouen 1444-1445 [ 14 ]
Ted Nasmith 's painting of Gandalf riding to Minas Tirith has been described as the most fully rendered and realistic image of the city, free of the silliness of much fantasy art. [ 23 ]