Tselepakos

On the hill of Agios Ioannis, southeast of the village of Tselepakos in Arcadia, a few broken stones are all that remain of what was once a tower. This was the main keep of a small castle, whose other remnants scatter down the slopes below. The dating is uncertain, placed somewhere in the 13th or 14th century, and the original builders are unknown. What survives is a ruin in the truest sense: little more than a trace of masonry atop the hill. Its purpose was presumably defensive, and it likely worked in concert with the nearby castle of Davia, a fortification of equally obscure chronology but one that is known to have existed in the Late Byzantine period. Today the site offers no grand walls or dramatic arches, only a quiet, weathered outline of stone and the suggestion of a watchful past.