Provlakas

The Provlakas tower is a faint ghost of Byzantine monastic defence, reduced to a few indistinct ruins on a low mound 1.5 kilometres southwest of Nea Roda, at the narrowest point of the Athos peninsula’s northeastern tip. The name, a corruption of “Preaulakas”, meaning “before the canal”, recalls the nearby Xerxes’ Canal, though that ancient cutting is itself no longer visible. This was one of at least four monastic towers that once guarded dependencies in the area, and the only one with any surviving trace. Professor I. Papaggelos identified it as protecting a metochi of the Megisti Lavra, an attribution generally accepted though not certain. Documents from the 13th and 14th centuries mention it, with the earliest reference dating to 1267, though the tower may originate in the 10th or 11th century. A major earthquake in 1585 destroyed the Provlakas towers, and any repairs were undone in 1821, when the Turks demolished many such structures during the Greek Revolution.