Leontari Castle

Leontari Castle stands as a scattering of ruins on a hill north of the village of the same name, twelve kilometres south of Megalopolis in Arcadia. The hill is said to resemble a seated lion, which gave the castle its name. Though the surviving remains are Byzantine, the fortress was originally founded by the Franks, who built it to protect their older stronghold at Veligosti, seat of one of the twelve baronies of the Principality of Achaea. Its position, at the crossroads of Messinia, Arcadia and Laconia, made it strategically vital. After the Byzantines recovered Mystras in 1262, the region became a battleground between Frankish and Greek forces. Veligosti was destroyed around 1300, and Leontari, now under the Despotate of Mystras, rose to become one of the most important medieval cities of the Peloponnese in the fourteenth century. Turkish raids in 1397 and 1423 damaged it, and in 1460 Mehmed the Conqueror razed it completely, leaving little today.