Kokkinies

The castle at Kokkinies is a dry-stone fortification in ruins, perched on a mountain peak northeast of the castle of Silimna in Arcadia. The peak and its surrounding uplands share the name Kokkinies, and the site enjoys visual contact with Tripoli, bordering the mountainous Trikorfa district where makeshift forts were thrown up during the Greek Revolution. Its history is otherwise unknown, and it appears in no sources. Nineteenth-century travellers W.M. Leake and W. Loring mistook it for the castle of Silimna, but they likely overlooked the medieval ruins on the hill of Agia Triada above that village. The masonry, of small, semi-finished stones without mortar, points to a medieval build, though not a Frankish one: the Franks held little interest in this high country and lost it early in the fourteenth century. A Byzantine origin, probably Middle Byzantine, seems most plausible. The castle may have served during the siege of Tripolitsa, though nothing specific survives. It runs northwest to southeast, some 100 metres long with a perimeter over 250 metres. The eastern side needed no wall, as a cliff drops away; elsewhere wall fragments survive, the best on the west, 0.50 metres thick, with three towers, a cistern, and a small plateau of about 45 square metres. The northern level, likely home to the gate, is enclosed by a dry stone wall. No internal buildings remain beyond two undefined stone piles. A path from Petrolakkas hill reaches the site.