The stair and the ramp from the great hall were therefore the sole means of approaching the first floor until the outer stair from the yard was added. The second floor could be approached in a circuitous manner by the upper part of the ramp and over the roof of rooms 111, 110, and 109, or more directly by the stair leading out of room 89. But this stair could only be reached either by the ramp and through rooms 105, 107, 93, 90, 88, and 89, or by the stair out of the great hall and through rooms 98, 97, 96, 92, and 89. The second floor could also be reached from the yard, by the stairs in the north-east and north-west angles and thence along the chemin de ronde. The rooms on the second floor do not correspond regularly with those of the floors below (Plate 3, Fig. 2). The second floor of the gate-tower is much ruined. It is possible that, as the authors of _Ocheïdir_ suggest, it was originally divided into three chambers lying north and south. Parts of the south wall remain, and there is clear evidence of a door jamb near its eastern end. On the east side the doorways leading into 117 and into the chemin de ronde are standing, together with the south jamb of a doorway which undoubtedly gave access to the roof of the vault between the gate-tower and the first round tower. The door into the corresponding balcony on the west side is gone, the door of the western wing of the chemin de ronde is much ruined, but the door into No. 116 is still perfect. Neither of these walls, to east and to west, shows any trace of a vault; the vault, if vault there were, covering the gate-tower chambers must therefore have sprung much higher than the vaults of the adjoining chambers.[24] To the west of 116 is a small room, 115, with a door into the chemin de ronde and a door into the open court, 114. A window in the south wall of this court overlooks the ṣaḥn of the mosque (Plate 23, Fig. 1). Still further west is a vaulted room, 113, presumably with a window looking out into the yard, but the west wall is much ruined. On the opposite side of the gate-tower, No. 117 opens into a small rectangular area, 118, where there is no sign of a roof; to the east of it lies an open space embracing the roofs of Nos. 94 and 95 together with a part of 93. Here, too, there is no trace of a vault in the north wall, nor of any party walls. The series of rooms on either side of the gate-tower, occupying the area over the corridors on the ground floor and of the corresponding rooms on the first floor, are designated by Dr. Reuther casemates because they were connected with the chemin de ronde and probably played some part in the defence of the palace. In all of them the vaults, which oversail the walls in the usual fashion, are slightly flattened at the top.