Arta

Arta’s castle is a representative survival of Byzantine military architecture, though what stands today is the result of many later repairs and modifications. It was built, or substantially rebuilt, in the thirteenth century by the Byzantine rulers of the Despotate of Epirus, when Arta served as their capital. The credit usually goes to Michael II Angelos Komnenos Doukas, who ruled from 1230 to 1268. The medieval builders incorporated part of the walls of ancient Amvrakia into their new fortifications, a city founded around 625 BC by Gorgos, son of the Corinthian tyrant Kypselos. Amvrakia had flourished under Pyrrhus of Epirus, who made it his capital in 295 BC, but was sacked by the Romans in 189 BC and again in 167 BC, when its walls were torn down. The castle is preserved in reasonably good condition today, a reminder of Arta’s medieval prominence as a refuge for Greeks fleeing the Frankish conquest after 1204.