The Citadel

The Citadel is the seat of the order of maesters, the scholars, healers, and counselors who serve the lords of Westeros. It stands in Oldtown, the oldest city of the realm, in the Reach, and is the great center of learning and knowledge in the Seven Kingdoms. There the maesters are trained, forge their chains of office, and study every branch of knowledge from medicine and history to astronomy and the higher mysteries.

The Citadel is ruled by the Conclave of archmaesters, the masters of the various disciplines, who together oversee the order, examine its students, and choose its leaders. It is a place of libraries, lecture halls, ravenries, and quiet courts, devoted to the preservation and pursuit of learning in a world where much old knowledge has been lost.

Geography

The Citadel sprawls along both banks of the river Honeywine in Oldtown, a maze of old buildings, towers, bridges, and walled gardens. Among its features are the great library, the ravenry from which the order's messenger ravens are sent across the realm, the Isle of Ravens, the Scribe's Hearth where students are examined, and the halls where the archmaesters lecture. The Citadel's white ravens, sent out to announce the change of seasons, fly from Oldtown.

The maesters

A maester forges a chain worn about the neck, each link of a different metal representing mastery of a discipline: silver for healing, iron for warcraft, Valyrian steel for the higher mysteries of magic, and so on. Acolytes study under the archmaesters until they have earned links enough to be raised to maester and sent to serve a castle, a holdfast, or a lord. The order keeps the chronicles of the realm, tends the sick, advises the great houses, and maintains the network of ravens that carries messages across Westeros.

History

The Citadel and the order of maesters are very old, predating the Targaryen conquest, and have served the realm through the rise and fall of dynasties. The maesters pride themselves on rationality and learning, and the order's influence reaches into every castle in Westeros, for nearly every lord keeps a maester at his side.

In the story

Samwell Tarly is sent to the Citadel by Jon Snow to train as a maester and to search its archives for knowledge of the Others and the threat gathering beyond the Wall. Through Sam the reader glimpses the workings of the Citadel, the archmaesters and their rivalries, the locked-away knowledge, and the strange portents that trouble even these learned men as the seasons turn toward winter.