Servou

On the hill called Palaiokastro, three kilometres north-east of Servos in Gortynia, western Arcadia, lie the ruins of a fortified medieval settlement whose origins reach back to the third century BC, or a little earlier. The site has never been properly studied, yet stray finds suggest it was occupied for many centuries, from antiquity until the Ottoman conquest. Its scale, some 19,000 square metres enclosed by a wall 600 metres long and preserved only to low height, indicates a place of possible regional importance, though its ancient name is unknown. The entrance was probably on the easier western approach, and while no towers survive, unusually thick stretches of wall may mark their foundations. The settlement first appears in the Chronicle of Morea, where the Franks halted at Servia around the battle of Prinitsa; it then vanishes from records until the Venetian census of 1700. Abandoned after the Turkish invasion, it remains an unstudied relic of layered centuries.