Fort Jesus, the fascinating 400-year-old tourist attraction at the Kenyan coast, is a product of military and architectural genius. The fort in Mombasa was built by the Portuguese. As a military venture, the construction of the fort was one of the most creative manoeuvres of the century - not just in East Africa but also globally.

The construction site not only complements the military judgement of its Portuguese architects but also reveals their attention to detail. Guarded by some 2,000 heavily armed soldiers barricaded behind such high, solid walls, ordering an attack would be like commanding troops to commit suicide.

Credit for the architecture of the fort belongs to an Italian engineer, Joao Batista Cairato, who was hired by the Portuguese to take charge of the construction. He was ordinarily based in India.

The original ramparts of the fort on the landward sides were two-and-a-half metres wide. The other walls were mainly made of solid coral blocks and had a width of one metre in some places. The lower part of the outer walls is solid coral, cut back to merge with the other walls and thus creating walls 15 metres high.

Another significant feature of the fort is that it was Isolated from the ground behind it by a ditch whose width varied between 3 and 12 metres. To complete the picture were gun ports, facilitating the use of cannons. The fort also had numerous rifle slits for the convenience of those rifle handlers targeting the enemy outside.

All the facilities were consciously introduced to ensure any enemy approaching the fort by land or sea was highly vulnerable. The Portuguese strategists appear to have spared some time to fortify the spirits (and perhaps morals) of their soldiers as evidenced by the construction of a church as part of the defence complex. The church has long since collapsed, but traces of the bases of its walls are clearly visible.

Fort Jesus is now a museum. Among items at the museum are Chinese, Persian, Arab and Portuguese ceramics. There is also a rich range of East African and foreign earthenware, in addition to instruments and weaponry. The museum also features sculptures and paintings representing various aspects of the lives of some Kenyan ethnic communities.

In spite of these changes, Fort Jesus has retained its 16th century air of military power and architectural distinction. It remains a salute to the military strategists and building engineers by whose thinking the fort came to be.

At one time, the fort was home to about 50 Portuguese men with their wives and children, and 1,500 soldiers from Malindi, Kilifi and Faza. Fort Jesus enabled the Portuguese to assert themselves on the East African coast for about a century. However, their fortunes changed dramatically when the fort fell to an army of Omani Arabs and locals in 1698 following a 33-month siege.

The siege started on March 13, 1696, and ended in December,1698. The Portuguese made abortive attempts to reoccupy the fort in 1699,1703 and 1710. However, they succeeded in 1728 and kept the fort up to November 1729. In spite of this success, by 1740 the Portuguese had been driven out of the areas north of River Ruvuma - thanks to the fighting spirit of Mombasa Arabs, supported by various Wanyika groups (peoples from the hinterland).

The Portuguese dug in on Mozambican soil, where they remained as colonial masters until the final years of the 20th century. Over the years, there have been some architectural modifications at Fort Jesus. Some of these, to improve the fort's defences, were carried out during the Portuguese period and some much later. For example, shortly after the 33-month seige, the Omani Arabs dug a well 23 metres deep inside the fort.

The well is still in use but its water is for washing purposes only as it is salty. A mosque was also built inside the fort at the end of the eighteenth century. On November 29, 1960, Fort Jesus was opened to the public as a national monument and museum.