Minas Morgul

The histories told at Rivendell in The Fellowship of the Ring include the loss of a city. Minas Morgul begins as Minas Ithil, the Tower of the Moon, raised by the Men of Westernesse in a green valley of the Mountains of Shadow to guard Gondor's eastern approaches, sister to Minas Anor across the river. In the middle years of the Third Age it is taken by the servants of Sauron, and under their dwelling it bears a new name, Minas Morgul, the Tower of Sorcery. Thereafter it is counted among the darkest places of the West-lands, its valley shunned by every traveler, and Gondor's maps mark a border there that no one willingly crosses. Its sister city, renamed Minas Tirith, keeps watch against it from across the river, one tower answering the other across a long enmity.