The clay walls could not withstand the rain and on 1 August 1654 one side of the bastion Walvisch collapsed,...

Even though this fort was never attacked in a war between England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 and the Netherlands 🇳🇱, rain was eventually clay’s and structure’s biggest enemy. I can only imagine them pray for rain to avoid this fort. That’s what they had to deal with. Shape of the inside fort is very similar to US pentagon.

...but wrongly proportioned windows had to be remade during the restoration in the 1980s.

I could understand that, since at that time they didn’t used computers to do it for them. Which leads me to think about how difficult it was to build these beautiful historic structures. These were real craftsman at that time. Today there are only few of them left. Now we have technology doing it all for us.

...tortured until he admitted his guilt.

Eventually, in most cases, even innocent people admitted their guilt. I wonder how many were actually guilty.
Very interesting look into South Africa 🇿🇦history of The Castle of Good Hope!