Pallantio

A lone medieval tower, reduced to a ruin about three metres high, stands on a naturally defensible hill above the chapel of Agia Paraskevi, eight kilometres south of Tripoli in Arcadia. Built of semi-finished stone set in lime mortar, with tile fragments filling the gaps, it retains its south-facing entrance but little else. Nothing is recorded of its history, and it appears in no medieval source, nor has it been studied by archaeologists. The masonry suggests a medieval date, neither ancient nor Ottoman, and it was probably raised in the Late Byzantine period, after the Byzantines of Mystras regained the region, perhaps in the 14th century. It may have been Frankish, and it may have been a small castle with an enclosure rather than a simple tower. The chapel below is partly cut into the rock, with its sanctuary inside a cave, said locally to have once led to the tower. The archaeologist Konstantinos Romaios thought this was a monastic skete, so the tower likely guarded the monastery.