Rath Dínen

Infobox LOTR place
image_place=
image_caption =No Picture
place_name = "Rath Dinen" (Silent Street)
place_alias = "Tombs of Kings"
place_description= The location of the Kings of Gondor and later, the Stewards
place_built= Probably Elendil and his sons
place_type = Street
place_realm = Gondor
place_sub_realm =Minas Tirith
place_time=
place_lord = Kings of Gondor
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth legendarium, the Rath Dínen (Sindarin for Silent Street) is a necropolis, the pathway between the city of Minas Tirith and Mindolluin in Gondor.

Accessed from a guarded doorway known as "Fen Hollen" (The Closed Door) on the sixth level of the city, the Rath Dínen was the hallowed road where the Kings and Stewards of Gondor constructed their ornate and expensive tombs, known as the Houses of the Dead (House of the Kings and House of the Stewards). Gondorian law forbade killing or violence in the Rath Dínen.

During the Siege of Minas Tirith the House of the Stewards was destroyed by a fire lit by the Steward Denethor in his suicide. Denethor had slowly been driven mad by Sauron's manipulation of the "palantír" kept in the Tower of Ecthelion. His despair prompted him to suicide when Minas Tirith was being besieged by Sauron's forces and his son Faramir was dying after a doomed mission to reclaim Osgiliath from the forces of Mordor. This is the only time Tolkien mentions blood being spilt on the Rath Dínen.

After the War of the Ring, the dead White Tree that had stood in the uppermost courtyard of the city was interred there. In its place in the courtyard was planted a new sapling of the White Tree found growing on the side of Mindolluin by Gandalf and Aragorn.

The Hobbits Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took were honoured with tombs in the Rath Dínen when they died, having spent their final years in Gondor in the company of King Aragorn II Elessar, who was interred there himself in IV 120. These Hobbits are the only beings interred there who were not Kings or Stewards of Gondor.

References

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