Chapter artwork for The Lord of the Rings book 5 chapter 1: Minas Tirith.
Minas Tirith means Tower of the Guard. The city was built on seven levels, with a citadel at the top. During the period of the Lord of the Rings, it was the prominent city of Gondor and the place where the Stewards of Gondor ruled since the line of kings had been broken for about a thousand years. The Crown of Gondor has seven jewels of adamant, represented here by seven stars, which is also the symbol of Elendil, the first King of Gondor.
"For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels, each delved into the hill, and about each was set a wall, and in each wall was a gate. But the gates were not set in a line: the Great Gate in the City Wall was at the east point of the circuit, but the next faced half south, and the third half north, and so to and fro upwards; so that the paved way that climbed towards the Citadel turned first this way and then that across the face of the hill. And each time that it passed the line of the Great Gate it went through an arched tunnel, piercing a vast pier of rock whose huge out-thrust bulk divided in two all the circles of the City save the first. For partly in the primeval shaping of the hill, partly by the mighty craft and labour of old, there stood up from the rear of the wide court behind the Gate a towering bastion of stone, its edge sharp as a ship-keel facing east. Up it rose, even to the level of the topmost circle, and there was crowned by a battlement; so that those in the Citadel might, like mariners in a mountainous ship, look from its peak sheer down upon the Gate seven hundred feet below. The entrance to the Citadel also looked eastward, but was delved in the heart of the rock; thence a long lamp-lit slope ran up to the seventh gate. Thus men reached at last the High Court, and the Place of the Fountain before the feet of the White Tower: tall and shapely, fifty fathoms from its base to the pinnacle, where the banner of the Stewards floated a thousand feet above the plain."
—Excerpt from The Lord of the Rings book 5 chapter 1
—Excerpt from The Lord of the Rings book 5 chapter 1