Minas Tirith is the capital of Gondor in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. It is a seven-walled fortress city built on the spur of a mountain, rising some 700 feet to a high terrace, housing the Citadel, at the seventh level. Atop this is the 300-foot high Tower of Ecthelion, which contains the throne room.
Scholars, following various leads in Tolkien's fantasy and letters, have attempted to identify Minas Tirith with several different historical or mythical cities, including Troy, Rome, Ravenna, and Constantinople.
In Peter Jackson's film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, Minas Tirith was given something of the look of a city of the Byzantine Empire, while its seven-tiered shape was suggested by the tidal island and abbey of Mont Saint-Michel in France. Tolkien illustrators including Alan Lee, John Howe, Jef Murray, and Ted Nasmith have all produced realistic paintings of the city.
Description
{| class="wikitable floatright"
|+ Timeline
|-
! Date !! Event
|-
| c. S.A. 3400 || Minas Tirith founded
|-
| T.A. 2050 || Eärnur, last King of Gondor, dies;<br/>Stewards rule in his stead
|-
| 2685–2698 || Ecthelion rebuilds the White Tower
|-
| 3018–19 || War of the Ring
|-
| 3019, 10 March || Mordor attacks Gondor
|-
| 3019, 15 March || Battle of the Pelennor Fields
|-
| 3019, 1 May || Aragorn crowned King of Arnor and Gondor
|}
Minas Tirith (Sindarin: "Tower of Guard") was the capital of Gondor at the end of the Third Age of Middle-earth. It lay at the eastern end of the White Mountains, built around a shoulder of Mount Mindolluin. The city is sometimes called "the White Tower", a synecdoche for the city's most prominent building in its Citadel, the seat of the city's administration. The head of government is the Lord of the City, a role fulfilled by the Stewards of Gondor. Other officials included the Warden of the Houses of Healing and the Warden of the Keys. The Warden of the Keys was in charge of the city's security, especially its gates, and the safe-keeping of its treasury, notably the Crown of Gondor; he had command of the city when it was besieged by the forces of Mordor.
Minas Tirith had seven walls: each wall held a gate, and for strength of defence each gate faced a different direction from the next, facing alternately somewhat north or south. Each level was about above the one below it, and each surrounded by a high stone wall coloured white, with the exception of the wall of the First Circle (the lowest level), which was black, built of the same material used for Orthanc. This outer wall was also the tallest, longest and strongest of the city's seven walls; it was vulnerable only to earthquakes capable of rending the ground where it stood. The Great Gate of Minas Tirith, constructed of iron and steel and guarded by stone towers and bastions, was the main gate in the first or outer wall of the city. In front of the Great Gate was a large paved area called the Gateway. The main roads to Minas Tirith met here: the North-way that became the Great West Road to Rohan; the South Road to the southern provinces of Gondor; and the road to Osgiliath, which lay to the north-east of Minas Tirith. Except for the high saddle of rock which joined the west of the hill to Mindolluin, the city was surrounded by the Pelennor, an area of farmlands.
The city's main street zigzagged up the eastern hill-face and through each of the gates and the central spur of rock. It led to the Citadel through the Seventh Gate on its eastern part. The White Tower, at the city's highest level with a commanding view of the lower vales of Anduin, stood in the Citadel, 700 feet above the surrounding plains, protected by the seventh and innermost wall atop the spur. Originally constructed by a king of yore, it is also known as the Tower of Ecthelion, the Steward of Gondor who had it rebuilt. The seat of the rulers of Gondor, the Kings and the Stewards, the tower stood tall, so that its pinnacle was some above the plain. The main doors of the tower faced east, onto the Court of the Fountain. Inside was the Tower Hall, the great throne room where the Kings (or Stewards) held court. The Seeing-stone of Minas Tirith, used by Denethor in The Return of the King, rested in a secret chamber at the top of the Tower. There was a buttery of the Guards of the Citadel in the basement of the tower. Behind the tower, reached from the sixth level, was a saddle leading to the Hallows or necropolis of the Kings and Stewards, with its street of tombs, Rath Dínen. Michael Livingston comments in Mythlore that Minas Tirith resembled Troy in having "impregnable walls", and in being subjected to a siege that seemed to threaten civilisation.
Ravenna
Tolkien's map-notes for the illustrator Pauline Baynes indicate that Minas Tirith had the latitude of Ravenna, an Italian city on the Adriatic Sea, though it lay "900 miles east of Hobbiton more near Belgrade".
The Tolkien scholar Judy Ann Ford writes that there is an architectural connection with Ravenna in Pippin's description of the great hall of Denethor, which in her view suggests a Germanic myth of a restored Roman Empire.
Ancient Rome
thumb|[[Aeneas escaped the ruin of Troy to become a hero of Rome, as Elendil escaped Númenor to found Minas Tirith. Painting by Federico Barocci, 1598]]
Sandra Ballif Straubhaar states in The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia that "the most striking similarities" are with ancient Rome. She identifies several parallels: Aeneas, from Troy, and Elendil, from Númenor, both survive the destruction of their home countries; the brothers Romulus and Remus found Rome, while the brothers Isildur and Anárion found the Númenórean kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor in Middle-earth; and both Gondor and Rome experienced centuries of "decadence and decline".
Judy Ann Ford adds in Tolkien Studies that Minas Tirith was entirely built of stone, and "the only culture within [the Anglo-Saxons'] historical memory that had made places like Minas Tirith was the Roman Empire." Tolkien intended to create a mythology for England, so that while the Third Age is ostensibly many thousands of years ago, much of the setting is medieval. She comments that Tolkien's account echoes the decline and fall of Rome, but "with a happy ending", as it "somehow withstood the onslaught of armies from the east, and ... was restored to glory." The classical scholar Miryam Librán-Moreno writes that Tolkien drew heavily on the history of the Byzantine Empire, and its struggle with the Goths and Langobards. The Byzantine Empire and Gondor were both, in Librán-Moreno's view, only echoes of older states (the Roman Empire and the unified kingdom of Elendil), yet each proved to be stronger than their sister-kingdoms (the Western Roman Empire and Arnor, respectively). Both realms were threatened by powerful eastern and southern enemies: the Byzantines by the Sassanid Persians and the Muslim armies of the Arabs and the Turks, as well as the Langobards and Goths; Gondor by the Easterlings, the Haradrim, and the hordes of Sauron. Both realms, as commentators including Librán-Moreno and Jefferson P. Swycaffer have observed, were in decline at the time of a final, all-out siege from the East; however, Minas Tirith survived the siege whereas Constantinople did not. Swycaffer adds that Constantinople was famed for the strength of its defences, with its concentric walls.
Tolkien's biographer John Garth writes that the White Tree has been likened to the Dry Tree of the 14th century Travels of Sir John Mandeville.
Contrast with Gondolin
Lisa Anne Mende, in Mythlore, contrasts the happy eucatastrophes which rescue Minas Tirith in The Lord of the Rings – the last-minute arrivals of the Riders of Rohan, and then of Aragorn in the enemy's ships – with the unmitigated disasters of the Fall of Gondolin and the other Elvish cities of Beleriand in The Silmarillion. She notes Tolkien's Christianity, which influenced Middle-earth, and describes the "first victory of Evil" in The Silmarillion as "resolved into the harmony of the victory of Good" in The Lord of the Rings. In The Silmarillion, the Dark Lord Melkor greatly influences the story, and the development of Middle-earth, whereas in The Lord of the Rings, Melkor's acolyte, the Dark Lord Sauron is almost successful but fails in his plans.