For a hundred years ruins cumbered the peninsula. Then (1480) the Mameluke Sultan Kait Bey fortified it as part of his coast defence against the Turks, who had taken Constantinople and were threatening Egypt. (p. 81). Kait Bey is a great figure at Cairo, where mosques commemorate his glorious reign. Here he only builds a fort, but like all his work it is architecturally fine, and even in decay its outlines are harmonious. The scheme was a pentagon (Plan II) and in the enclosed area, on the exact site of the Pharos, stood a square castle or keep with a mosque embedded in it. (Plan I, Fig. iii, which shows the castle before it was ruined, the minaret sticking up inside it). The Turks effected their conquest in 1517, and when their power in its turn declined, Mohammed Ali (1805-1848) modernised the defences. No visitors were admitted, and the Fort gained the reputation of an impregnable and mysterious place. Its career ended with the English bombardment of 1882. Though it did not suffer as much as its neighbour Fort Adda, damage enough was done. The castle was shattered, the minaret snapped, and the desolation and squalor re-established that brood there to-day. * * * * * We can now examine the existing remains. (_See_ Plans I & II pp. 134 & 135). The connecting spit of land only formed in the 9th cent. Previously there was shallow water, spanned by a bridge. Right, as we approach, is anchorage for an Italian fishing fleet; the men come from Bari in the Adriatic.—The road leads by the side of the fort to the new breakwater, built to protect the Eastern Harbour and the Sea wall. The Breakwater is a noble work, and it is a pity it is approached through a gateway that suggests an English provincial Jail; the embellishments of modern Alexandria are unduly lugubrious. The blocked up _Gateway_ to the Fort is flanked by round towers; inside it are several rooms with 15th cent. vaulting.—To its left, built into the masonry of Kait Bey’s wall or lying on the beach, are about thirty _broken columns_ of red Assouan granite; also two or three pieces of fine speckled granite and one piece of marble. These are survivals from the Pharos, and may have stood in the colonnade of its surrounding court; the sea wall of that court probably diverged here from the line of Kait Bey’s wall; there are traces of cutting among the rocks.