Muraille Entree Principale

A castle's defences are never more expressive than at the gate, and that is the stretch of wall modelled here: the main entrance through a fortress curtain wall, where the masonry opens just far enough to let a road pass and then closes tight around it again. The French name says the same thing plainly enough, principal entrance rampart. It is built for people assembling a scene rather than displaying a single figure. Set alongside towers, keeps and plain wall runs, it gives a fortress somewhere to actually begin, and it gives a wargaming table a choke point worth fighting over. On its own, finished as weathered masonry, it still stands up as an architectural model in its own right, the sort of piece that looks deliberate on a shelf beside the histories it belongs with.