One was built by ruling feudal lords in medieval times and the other by frontiersmen. Humanity was almost past the point of needing fortresses by the time the Americans pioneered the West. Of course there aren’t any medieval castles in America, the natives had no need for such buildings.
Mt. St. Michel is not a fortress. It is a fortified medieval city with a cloister that still has the walls, as it made no sense to remove them for city expansion.
And if you consider MSM ugly, it only shows that you have never, ever been there.
"1) A fortified place, especially a large, permanent military stronghold that often includes a town.
A fortified town or position; a fort; a castle; a stronghold; hence, any place of defense or security"
It literally comes from the word fortification, which means making something more defendable using walls, fortifying it etc. What did people need to fortify? Towns.
MSM? No idea what that is. If it’s what is shown in the image, it’s not “ugly” and nobody ever said it was, it’s just underwhelming. The USA doesn’t have a long history compared to countries in Europe, and they didn’t have to defend against invaders and therefore never fortified their towns and cities. As a result, there’s no impressive fortresses in the USA.
MSM = Mt. St. Michael, and no, I am not American. But I have been on MSM a few times. It is definitely not the ugliest “Fortress” in Europe. BTW, I reserve the term fortress for a primarily military building in contrast to a fortified city. Or else about thousands of cities here would have qualified as “Fortress” in their time.
And historically, one of the key factors that distinguishes between a town and a city was the right of a city to build fortifications. So while MSM today might be rated as a town due to its size, it definitely was a city back then.
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