Circular Tower

On the east coast of the Messenian peninsula, near modern Koroni where the ancient city of Asine once flourished, stands a Byzantine circular tower. Its round plan marks a deliberate advance in military architecture, offering defenders advantages that earlier square structures could not match. The surrounding site was inhabited from the Archaic period through the medieval era, and the tower itself spans a remarkable stretch of history, from archaic and classical times through the Hellenistic and Roman Republican periods to the fourteenth, fifteenth, and eighteenth centuries.