Castle of Los Zúñiga was built in the 15th century by D. Pedro de Zuñiga. Its objective was to defend the passage of Barca del Río Piedras.
Its structure is rectangular in shape and consists of a wall circuit with seven square towers at the corners and on the front and side canvases. The most important towers are the bell tower and the homage tower. In addition to these towers, there was a second outer low wall, already disappeared.
In the 16th century the castle was refortified. Barbican was added, which was specially conditioned. It was an ideal refuge for citizens before the attacks of the Portuguese occurred in the 17th century and ended up consolidating the current town.
In the 18th century, it was planned to convert it into a barracks for the guard corps but discarded the project ended abandoned in 1812.
In 1815, the Duke of Béjar transferred the property to the Villa. In 1817, it was disarmed and adapted for cemeteries, dismantling the barbican and building barracks of vaults attached to the walls inside. He kept this use up to 1,872. Then it was destined to deposit coals and wood, after its desacralization.
In 1880 the file for the demolition is instructed, for its state of ruin, which is understood to threaten to collapse, and the corpses that are still preserved in the vaults, not those on the ground, are exhumed. As on other subsequent occasions, the demolition was not carried out due to the difficulties involved, acting simply to consolidate the most dangerous.
References:The Citadelle of Quebec is an active military installation and official residence of both the Canadian monarch and the Governor General of Canada. It is located atop Cap Diamant, adjoining the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City. The citadel is the oldest military building in Canada, and forms part of the fortifications of Quebec City, which is one of only two cities in North America still surrounded by fortifications, the other being Campeche, Mexico.
The first fortifications in Quebec were built by the Governor General of New France Louis de Buade, and completed just in time for the Battle of Quebec in 1690.
After the British conquest in the second half of the 18th century, the problem of Quebec City's defences grew more acute.