Historic Spanish-built bastion in Gibraltar, guarding Charles V Wall’s western base.
South Bastion, or Baluarte Sur, is a historic bastion within Gibraltar’s fortifications, protecting the western base of the Charles V Wall and the south end of the Line Wall Curtain facing the Bay of Gibraltar. Built by Spanish military engineers by 1627, it later received British improvements and now remains publicly accessible.
South Bastion, known in Spanish as Baluarte Sur or historically as Baluarte de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, is a bastion forming part of the fortifications of Gibraltar. It protects the western base of the Charles V Wall and stands at the south end of the Line Wall Curtain, which defends the town from attack from the Bay of Gibraltar. A curtain wall runs east from the bastion to the base of a precipice, pierced by the Southport Gates and guarded on either side by the South Bastion and the Flat Bastion. The bastion was originally built by Spanish military engineers and had been completed by 1627, with sources connecting its design to Italian engineers working for Philip II of Spain. Historical descriptions from the eighteenth century emphasise that the South Bastion is considerably higher than the surrounding works in order to shield the town from the nearby red sands, and note its irregular faces, embrasures for guns, breastwork, and flanking positions to cover the ditch in front of the gate. Today, one of its uses is to house the Gibraltar College on top of the bastion. Below its wall stands a statue of Horatio Nelson by John Doubleday, commissioned by the Government of Gibraltar and cast in part from copper taken from HMS Victory, commemorating the 200th anniversary of Nelson’s Trafalgar victory and death.
