Most fought over piece of land?

Upvote:1

The town of Winchester, VA, changed hands 70 times during the American Civil War. In just 4 years.

Upvote:2

When you say "with war", I'm assuming you don't mean to count all the land of a country at war. For example, I'm not sure Kent is any more "fought over" because of the many Anglo-Indian Wars. I imagine you mean what land has had soldiers fighting on it most, both in terms of time and also intensity (how expensive to human life this ground has been).

Given this idea of "most fought over land" I believe this land is to be found on the western front, this is the greatest example of extended and brutal military campaigns with very little movement and an obvious starting point. More specifically I think the land around Verdun was the "most fought over".

The largest military operations include The Battle of Verdun. Firstly, this battle was clearly of the scale to qualify the land as very fought over (755,000–976,000 causalities). It's admittedly not the largest battle on this list (beat by other battles of ww2 and ww1, including the Somme), however what makes it stand out is that there was very little movement of forces after the battle. This is often said of the western front in general, but if you look at the other major battle, The Battle of the Somme, you'll find that as the battle closed the Germans withdrew 40 miles to the Hindenburg line. No such retreat occurred in Verdun, the sector around it's fortification systems remained the focus of fighting from the German invasion of France in 1914 to Armistice 1918. If you look at this map you can see how Verdun remained in constant contention during ww1.

edit: If it's just brutality in a small space the obvious answer is Leningrad or Stalingrad.

Upvote:2

I would guess Megiddo, Israel. Megiddo was an ancient fortified city; one of the most famous battlegrounds in the world. Historians believe that more battles were fought at this location than anywhere else on earth: Assyrians, Canaanites, Egyptians, Greeks, Israelites, Persians, Philistines, and Romans. Although Megiddo was not a fortress in the days of World War I, a critical battle enabling the British to wrest control of the Holy Land from the Turks took place there.

Upvote:4

Such place should be looked:

  1. on the border of some nations, as Calais,
  2. where peoples and states changed and fighted frequently (Crimea: Taurs, Skifs, Sarmats, Greeks, Romans, Bospor, Gots, Byzanc, Armenians, Karaims, Tmutarakan, Genoa, Tartars, Russians)
  3. Where very many little tribes/people live together. Than it will be New Guinea, having more languages than all other Earth altogether, and where all tribes were in constant war forever.
  4. Some node, important for many nations/people/cultures. (Jerusalem)
  5. The longest uninterrupted battle in one place (Troy)
  6. The hardest battle with most killed or died due to the siege (Leningrad in 1941-43).
  7. The hardest battle due to importance and KIA/prisoners (Stalingrad in 1942 - the turnpoint of WW2)
  8. If you were not limit the size of the "plot", I think, the Europe or Asia would fit, too. Uninterruptable wars for all the human history.:-)

Which do you mean?

Upvote:13

As someone in the comments has said, Jerusalem must be on the top of the list.

From Wikipedia

During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times.

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