Ancient Paos

The hill called Skoupitsa, a kilometre east of Paleo Paos on the Patra to Tripolis road, carries the remnants of an ancient acropolis that later found medieval use. Herodotus knew the settlement as the kome Paos, and Pausanias, visiting in 167 AD, found it already ruined. The old town lay on the plateau below the hill, with its acropolis above; at some point before the thirteenth century, the fortification was reoccupied, as medieval repairs and additions show, though the details of that episode remain unknown.

The site is unexcavated, and neither towers nor houses are visible today. What stands out are two circuit walls. The inner, ancient enceinte follows an irregular plan of roughly 35 by 22 by 40 by 10 metres. The outer wall, medieval and built of irregular dry stone, runs 516 metres and encloses about an acre. Medieval patching appears on stretches of the older wall, and a cistern, 11 by 8 metres and still 3 metres high, survives at the acropolis's northwest corner.