Vounaria

On the hill called Goulas, above the village of Vounaria north of Koroni, stand the scant remains of a small Venetian fort. It was built early in the fifteenth century, during the first Venetian period of the Peloponnese, after a Turkish raid of 1401 destroyed the village below. The fort clearly belonged to the wider defensive network of the important fortress city of Koroni, and it also watched over part of the inland road running from Navarino to Koroni. Curiously, it does not appear in Venetian castle lists of the late fifteenth century, though it may be the Vunargo recorded in 1463. The village itself appears in Venetian documents before 1430 as Vounario, Vounaria or Avounaria, and later in the 1702 census as Vunaria. The layout is almost square, with a perimeter of 42 metres and an area of 115 square metres. The fort is in ruins, though the southwest side survives to some height and the outline of the fortification remains clear. Near the southwest corner is an underground cistern, apparently used in relatively recent times, perhaps by local farmers.