Young Writers Society

What would those typically be made out of? Would cities even have walls? Would it depend where they were located (e.g. would a city in the mountains have one made of stone?)?

If you're dealing with the Medieval time period, city walls would be made of timber or mud. Very few stone works were built until the... I'd say the 1400s. (Not sure on that date at all. Check it for yourself.)

Mountains would have the timber walls, valleys would have mud.

When it comes to what cities have walls, places deep inside the boarder probably wouldn't have them. Boarder towns, on the other hand, would have walls. Thick and tall ones. They would get thinner as they got taller, making them structurally stable. And if your country is full of civil wars and bandits, most, if not all, cities would have walls for protection.

The farms, however, would Not be inside walls. Walls would only enclose the main bulk of the city.

Hope this helps! If you had a specific time-period I could be more specific with materials, but as a rule of thumb stone is the most expensive building material. It would only be used for major fortresses and strategic cities. (Castles were often made of wood or mud instead of stone for this reason. I'm not sure what caused the switch-over to stone however. )

~Rosey

Castle walls intially started from wood and mud like Rosey Unicorn said. These materials were not ideal as the walls would need constant maitenance. Eventually as technology advanced,so the castle structure and complexity. Mud, grass and wood was eventually transformed into stone, rock and concrete. The walls consisted of two parallel walls of thick stone filled with rubble and dirt. This was usually done through the process of quarrying.

Wall Structure developement.
Castle walls started off with logs and the wall structure usally had to compliment the landscape. Eventually this evolved to rigid polygons such as rectangles and squares. However, castle defenders soon realized structural weakness of polygons.
1. They could easily forced down through tunneling .
2. Blind spots.

Soon castle walls were rounded to serve several purposes:
1. To eliminate blind spots.
2. Less materials needed than polygon structures.
Circles were stronger and more structurally stable.
3. Harder to topple as a result of tunneling.

Soon structure and aesthetics came to play and castles were as visually appealing as their were strong. Not all castles were fortifications. I.e Neuschwanstein castle

Consider the application of this information to the the time period given like Rosey Unicorn said. Different time periods were in different stages of wall making/castle making. In addition, materials vary due to geogrpahic location. Castles are built to statisfy the landscape of the area.

Would it be okay to expect a capital city (that's rich) to have a stone wall? The time period is about the 12-1300's I'd imagine (highly advanced seige weaponry and some rudimentary explosives, but no guns or cannons), and it's near a range of mountains. And how high do you think would be good? 30 feet? 40? 20?

Hrm, since things seem to be more advanced, I'd think that a highly-attacked capital city would be viable. Or even if attack is in the history.

Reason I throw "attacks" in there is usually a smart country would put its fortifications on the boarder so that nothing reaches the capital city. Capitals are usually in the safest arias, especially if the nobles live there.

However, some places, like in India, have walls around their palace complexes (complexes as big as a city). Really depends on how safe you want things to be.

Mountains don't necessarily mean stone. The Egyptians hardly had any mountains, but they would quarry stones and ferry them to the building site. It all depends on if it's a good quarrying/building stone. ^_^

~Rosey