Cork Harbour has an extensive array of fortifications to be seen. These range from Medieval Tower Houses, to 20th Century gun batteries. Cork, as a strategic port and provisioning centre for the British Empire, was heavily fortified, especially from the time of the Napoleonic Wars

What made Cork unique, was that with the departure of the British from the Treaty Ports, these forts and defenses were left virtually untouched and unmodernised. In the UK, many coastal defences were continually upgraded as technology progressed. In Cork, however, the coastal defences still, externally at least, look as they would have at the turn of the 20th Century