17. Another inspiration drawn from the Roman Era, The Wall is an exaggerated fantasy version of the real-life Hadrian’s Wall built in Roman Britain
A colossal fortification, stretching for three hundred miles along the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, The Wall separates the southern realm from the untamed lands beyond. Reportedly constructed out of solid ice under the direction of Bran the Builder, using means unknown but presumed to include magic, the seven-hundred-foot-high barrier is believed to have been built some eight thousand years prior to the events of the show. Forgotten by most, the original purpose of the wall was to defend the realms of men from the White Walkers, but by the War of the Five Kings had been overshadowed by the fortification’s role in precluding invasion by indigenous inhabitants from beyond the wall: the wildlings.
Although not made of ice or seven hundred feet tall, The Wall bears multiple similarities to Hadrian’s Wall. Built in the Roman province of Britannia, with construction beginning in 122 CE during the reign of the eponymous emperor, Hadrian’s Wall spans the width of northern England between the River Tyne and the Solway Firth. Not the only giant defensive structure, the Antonine Wall, built twenty years after its more famous counterpart, marked the northernmost limits of Roman Britain. Spanning sixty-three miles across the Central Belt of Scotland, the three-meter-high wall was abandoned less than a decade after completion.