Belesi

The Belesi watchtower is a Frankish ruin on a low rock beside the road to Kefalovryso in Argolis, a village once known as Ano Belesi. What survives is the remnant of an ancient tower, later pressed into service during the Middle Ages, and it now stands in ruins close to a chapel of Agios Dimitrios. Its likely purpose was as a guard post, perhaps a phrourion marking the contested frontier between the Frankish fief of Nafplion-Argos and the Byzantine Despotate of Mystras. If so, it would have been active from the early decades of the 14th century until 1388, when the Byzantines took control of the region. The site is modest: a single tower on a rocky outcrop, its old stones speaking to a brief but charged period of border politics rather than any grand medieval fortification.