Palatos

High on a peak of Mount Lycaion, at 1,325 metres, the scant ruins of this small fortress look out over the Neda valley. It stands near the old border between Arcadia and Messinia, in what the Franks of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries called the Skorta, a mountainous region that guarded the passes to the fertile plains beyond. The castle's enclosure, no more than a thousand square metres, runs roughly north to south, about forty metres long and eighteen wide. The outer walls, two and a half metres thick, were raised without mortar and have largely tumbled, especially on the western side, where they appear to have slid down the slope. The surviving feature is a tower on the south, its ground floor and vaulted ceiling still partly intact, built with mortar, which marks it as medieval. It may well be the Beaufort castle raised by Prince Florent de Hainaut in 1296 or 1297, during his failed siege of Ai-Giorgis, though other candidates exist and certainty is impossible.