An invitation to study star forts closely: their geometry, their relationship to water, their changing landscapes, and the records they have left behind.

An atlas with room to grow

Inspired by a long fascination with Starforts.com, this independent portal brings together locations and pathways into further research. It is not affiliated with that website. The ambition is worldwide coverage; the present collection is a starting inventory, not a claim to have found every star fort.

What belongs here?

The core subject is the bastion fort: an enclosure whose projecting angular works form a distinctive plan. Fortified towns, surviving earthworks, reconstructed sites and demolished systems also belong in the investigation. A star-shaped outline alone does not establish a structure’s date, origin or function.

The broad index combines location leads from Starforts.com’s gallery and Wikipedia’s List of bastion forts. These collections include borderline cases and other fortification types. These remain marked as index leads rather than being presented as confirmed star forts. Country groupings are for navigation, not statements about sovereignty; transcontinental countries are grouped provisionally. Antarctica has no entries in this collection; Oceania currently includes related coastal fortifications for comparison.

Water is a question worth examining

Moats, canals, tides, drainage, inundation systems and water supplies deserve careful, site-specific study. A wet moat is not necessarily seawater; an inland fort may have a dry ditch. The Elvas complex, for example, is described by UNESCO as an extensive dry-ditch system supplied by an aqueduct.

The idea that star forts were inherited energy-generating structures is an alternative hypothesis motivating the inquiry, not an established finding of this atlas. The sources assembled here do not establish saltwater power generation. Testing that proposal would require physical mechanisms, dated components, measurable outputs and evidence that distinguishes it from documented hydraulic and defensive uses.

Keep the evidence visible

UNESCO’s Venetian and Vauban dossiers document bastioned military systems and their historical development. Rather than treating an aerial resemblance as proof, compare dated maps, archaeological phases, construction records and changes visible in the landscape. Dates in this atlas are source-reported dates, not independently authenticated construction chronologies.

How to read a record

Featured profile: an entry with an authored orientation note. Index lead: a location inherited from the discovery list that needs closer review. Neither badge certifies every claim. Coordinate precision, original construction, present condition and image dates need to be checked against the linked source.

The entrance model

The animated entrance is an original symbolic composition inspired by bastioned geometry. Its buildings, lighting and central basin are interpretive design choices, not a surveyed reconstruction or evidence of a historical function. Three.js is used under its MIT license.

Image and data credits

Images retain their own credits, dates and licenses in the image archive and record viewer. Historical plans are representations made at a particular time; they are not automatically construction drawings. Photographs are dated records, not live views. No generated imagery is used as evidence.

Wikipedia-derived index entries and extracted facts are attributed to Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; each record links to its source. Edits include regrouping, deduplication, concise field extraction and separate editorial notes. Starforts.com is credited separately for its factual location leads; its photographs and prose have not been republished here. The basemap uses Natural Earth geometry via the geo-countries dataset. Boundaries are approximate.

Research snapshot: September 2026. Missing imagery and unreviewed fields are displayed openly. Further coverage requires continued archival and location research.