The modern town is contained within the walls of the Byzantine citadel, which however occupies but a small portion of the ancient city. Its high walls flanked with towers are still in a tolerably good state of preservation, and are evidently built of still older materials.[91]
The French have repaired the walls of Solomon’s citadel, now the outer line of fortification, and have added a modern Kasba containing barracks and other subsidiary military buildings, which latter serves as the present citadel.
It is almost square in form, the perimeter being about 1,170 yards in extent; the walls are built of large cut stones, and it is strengthened by fourteen square towers, four of which are at the angles, and the rest irregularly distributed between them. The height of the walls varies from sixteen to thirty-three feet, that of the towers from thirty to forty, and the thickness of the masonry from six to eight feet. It has three gates, the Bab el-Kedim, or old gate, formed by the arch of Caracalla; the Bab el-Djedid, or new gate, sometimes called that of Solomon; and the Bab el-Kasba, or gate of the citadel, which forms the entrance to the new quarter occupied by the troops.
The Temple of Jupiter ([Plate VIII.]), situated within the present enceinte, is of the Corinthian order, forty-five feet nine inches long, including the pronaos, by twenty-six feet three inches broad. The material of the main building is compact limestone. Each side is strengthened by four pilasters, and in front is the portico supported by six monolithic columns of marble, four of which are in front. It is raised on a basement or podium twelve feet high, in which are three vaults now filled up, and access to the temple is attained by a handsome flight of cut stone steps.
The entablature is not of a regular form, the architrave and frieze forming one height; over the columns and pilasters are panels ornamented by bucranes or ox skulls. The intermediate spaces are occupied by panels highly sculptured. This is immediately crowned by the cornice, above which is a highly ornamented attic, now about equal in height to the entablature. No doubt, it had a cornice, which has disappeared. In the panels between the bucranes are eagles holding thunderbolts, on either side of which are serpents and branches with trilobate leaves. On the attic, the vertical panels over the columns and pilasters have trophies of armour, and the oblong ones alternately garlands and double horns of plenty.
The attic on the front has no sculpture, and this was doubtless intended to receive marble slabs with a dedicatory inscription. The soffits between the columns are everywhere richly decorated, and between the two central columns is the head of Jupiter Tonans. It was originally surrounded by an enclosure wall, the gate of which now actually serves as the front door of the mosque opposite.
This building has been put to many uses since the French occupation; at first it was a soap manufactory; then the Bureau du Génie; subsequently a prison, and a canteen: and finally it was converted into the parish church, a dome being added, a bell perched on the top, and the interior supplied with ecclesiastical fittings in the worst style of the génie militaire. Happily the dome fell in, and the building is now unused for any purpose; it is greatly to be desired that the hideous modern additions may be removed, and the temple restored to its original beauty.
Plate VIII.
J. LEITCH &. Co. Sc.