- Entrances
- One
- Approach
- A stone stair on an arch across the ditch
- Also
- A timber bridge, removable
- Exposed
- The whole way up
The gate is reached by a stone stair that climbs on an arch across the ditch, and by a timber bridge — the kind of bridge whose value is that it can be taken away.
Everything about the approach is designed to slow you down and expose you while it does. You come up in single file, in the open, on a stair, with the wall above you the whole way and nowhere to go but forward.
It is the same idea the Ayyubids used at Aleppo, and it survives here in a smaller and clearer form: the whole weight of the fortification is concentrated on the one point where a person can actually get in.