Did Free People of Gondor Ever Inhabit 🌋Mordor?

[Turin]

I was wondering if any free people of Gondor or anywere else ever lived in Mordor. If not who built Barad Dur or was it built by Morgoth .

 

[Beorn]

None of the men of Gondor lived in Mordor, unless they had turned evil, but I don't think there's any reference to that happening. Sauron built Barad-dur with the power of the ring.

 

[Great Khan]

there were some people from gondor inhabiting towers on the border of Mordor: some at Udun and some at Cirith Ungol which were towers and strongholds built by gondor to keep evil out of mordor. And Minas Morgul is sort of in mordor and it was a great city a long time ago

 

[Eledhwen]

Sauron's structures were built with the power of the ring, which probably means that they were Architacturally impossible, but the actual stones will have been gathered and put together by his orcs and thralls.

 

[Nightingale]

Wasn't Minas Morgul actually a stronghold of Gondor after Sauron was defeated the first time to keep watch over Mordor. I can't remember.

 

[Eriol]

c.1000 Sauron, alarmed by the growing power of the Númenoreans, chooses Mordor as a land to make into a stronghold. He begins the building of Barad-dûr.

c.1600 Sauron forges the One Ring in Orodruin. He completes the Barad-dûr. Celebrimbor perceives the designs of Sauron

These quotes are from the Tale of Years in the Appendices of LotR, 2nd Age. I know Gandalf said that the foundations of Barad-dûr were built with the power of the Ring, but as I take the Tale of Years to be authoritative, it seems the Ring helped in other parts of the building but not in the foundations. I can't see how the foundations of a tower can be left for last .

 

[Ithrynluin]

Originally posted by Nightingale
Wasn't Minas Morgul actually a stronghold of Gondor after Sauron was defeated the first time to keep watch over Mordor. I can't remember.

Yes. Minas Ithil, the Tower of the Moon, was built by Elendil and his people at the end of the Second Age.
It was captured by the Ringwraiths in TA 2002 and renamed into Minas Morgul, the Tower of Sorcery.

 

[Brent]

Sauron buit Barad dur and he used the ring to do so. I like the poster who said that probably meant the building was impossible. That just how I imagined it.
At the risk of bringing down the wrath of the Peter Jackson Bain Club I quite like the shot from FOTR of BD where there is a causeway full of orcs AND next to it is a canal of lava that runs from Mount Doom into BD's "moat" - Totally impossible.

Though we know Sauron is a Smith Spirit and he used Mount Doom for his sorceries.

 

[Eledhwen]

I think you're right, Brent. One of the things I like about Lord of the Rings is that the sorcery/wizardry is in the very architecture, which Peter Jackson must have picked up on.

Remember, PJ is very much a Tolkien fanatic, and I doubt whether anyone else could have got so much right in their filming and still obtain funding. Personally, I like to imagine him surfing this forum under a suitable Middle-Earth style pseudonym (why else would he have removed Arwen Warrior Princess from Helm's Deep? - but that's for a different thread).