Barad-dûr



"Then at last his gaze was held: wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black tower of adamant, he saw it: Barad-dûr, Fortress of Sauron. All hope left him."

- The Fellowship of the Ring

Barad-dûr, also known as the Dark Tower, was the Dark Lord Sauron's main stronghold in Middle-earth. Built during the Second Age, it was destroyed at the end of the War of the Ring.

Barad-dûr was built by Sauron in the land of Mordor, not far from the volcano called Mount Doom (Orodruin). The construction of the tower begun around SA 1000 and took six hundred years to complete; it was the greatest fortress ever built since the War of Wrath and the fall of Angband, and much of Sauron's personal power went into it.

Barad-dûr was besieged for seven years by the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, and was leveled after Sauron's defeat at the end of the Second Age, but because it was created using the power of the One Ring its foundations could not be destroyed completely unless the Ring itself should be destroyed. Isildur failed to destroy the Ring, and so the tower was re-built when Sauron returned to Mordor thousands of years later.

Only when Frodo Baggins (and Gollum) destroyed the One Ring did the Tower finally fall; without Sauron's power to sustain it, it could not stand. Barad-dûr collapsed to ruin and Sauron was finally defeated.

The Dark Tower was described as existing on a massive scale so large it was almost surreal, although Tolkien does not provide much detail beyond its size and immense strength. Since it had a "topmost tower" (the location of the Window of the Eye, from which the Eye of Sauron gazed out over Middle-earth), it presumably had multiple towers. It is otherwise described as dark and surrounded in shadow, so that it could not be clearly seen. In the film, it is thought that it's side is around 16000 feet tall, dwarfing Minas Tirith.

Barad-dûr in the movies
In the Lord of the Rings movies by Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor and his design team built a 9 foot high miniature bigature of Barad-dûr for use in the film. Using the size scale for the model implemented for the films, the Dark Tower is depicted as being over 5000 meters (16404 feet tall; roughly Twenty times the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world

Visually, the eye of Sauron was on top of Barad-dûr, looking out on Middle-earth, searching for the One Ring.



The Return of the King film also shows Barad-dûr as clearly visible from the Black Gate of Mordor. Being 5000 meters tall, it is more visible from the black gate, but also significantly closer to Mount Doom than in the previous two films. In the film version, the geography of Mordor and Middle-earth in general seems to have been compressed somewhat, perhaps for artistic reasons related to rendering such complex stories in a visual medium. In the case of the Black Gate scene, having Barad-dûr visible from the Gate means that the army can see the Eye of Sauron staring at them.

Etymology
Barad-dûr was a Sindarin word that meant 'Dark tower'. Barad-dûr's name in the Black Speech of Mordor is Lugburz and is what the orcs call it.

External link

 * Barad-dûr at Tolkien Gateway