Palaiokastro of Vitala
On a hill called Panagitsa, four kilometres west of Vitala near Kymi, stands the Palaiokastro, a Frankish tower of probable fourteenth-century Venetia…
75 documented fortresses across Greece, each with real history, a location, and cited sources. A sample below; the full set travels with you offline in the Atika app.
On a hill called Panagitsa, four kilometres west of Vitala near Kymi, stands the Palaiokastro, a Frankish tower of probable fourteenth-century Venetia…
The source material describes the city of Ioannina, not a specific named monument. It discusses the city's history, privileges granted by the Byzantin…
The great ring of defences around Heraklion is the finest surviving fortification of its age in the Mediterranean, a Venetian project begun in 1462 an…
The Venetians held Crete from 1212, relying for centuries on the old Byzantine fortification on the Castello hill near the port, but the ruinous raid …
Gramvousa, known in antiquity as Koryko and later by the Venetian name Garabuse, carries a fortress built between 1579 and 1584 on the island's highes…
The Museum of Chalkis occupies what survives of the Venetian "Castle of Negreponte", the fortress that once guarded the city. Likely raised in the 15t…
Arta’s castle is a representative survival of Byzantine military architecture, though what stands today is the result of many later repairs and modifi…
The castle of Livadia occupies a rocky hill above the gorge of the river Erkyna, a site fortified since at least the fifth century BC, when the region…
The Castle of Mytilene, capital of Lesbos, ranks among the largest fortresses in Greece, covering some 80,000 square metres on a hill north of the tow…
Frangokastello, on Crete's south coast facing the Libyan Sea, is a Venetian coastal fortress with a name born of local contempt. Built between 1371 an…
The Fortress of Agia Roumeli is a small Ottoman military work, raised in 1869 on a hill above the village of the same name, at the southern exit of th…
The triangular fortress of Paliokastro, or Paleokastro, stands on a large rock at the sea, eight kilometres west of Heraklion, where the modern highwa…
The Fortezza of Rethymno, a Venetian fortress on a hill that was possibly once an island, dominates the town and the western coast of Crete. The site …
The Koules of Nio Chorio is a small Ottoman fortification, raised in 1867 on the site of an earlier Venetian castle. It stands on a hill south of the …
The fortress at Aptera is a comparatively recent addition to Crete's martial landscape, dating from 1868 and still standing in reasonably good order. …
Souda is a small island that keeps watch at the mouth of the gulf bearing its name, a position reflected in its Latin-derived title, from sudes, meani…
On the northwestern side of Chania’s harbour stands the Firka Fortress, built by the Venetians as the Revellino del Porto, a defensive work intended t…
Sokastro is a small, uninhabited islet off the west coast of Karpathos, facing the village of Lefkos. Its rocky ground holds the scant remains of a fo…
The Castle of Kythira is the island’s defining monument, perched on a high south-facing rock above Chora and surviving in reasonably good condition. I…
The Castle of Akrotiri, raised around 1335, was known in medieval Italian as ‘Punta Castelli’ or ‘La Ponta’, both meaning ‘the peak’. It began as a Ve…
The Knights of Saint John raised this substantial fortress in the interior of Kos during the 14th century, specifically between 1322 and 1346 under Gr…
The Bourtzi of Methoni guards a rock that reaches into the sea in the southwestern Peloponnese, a site occupied from classical and Hellenistic times t…
Palaio Pyli is an inland Byzantine citadel near the centre of Kos, about nine kilometres from the coast, perched on a hill 360 metres high. The site m…
New Navarino Fortress, or Niokastro, stands inside the modern town of Pylos, the younger counterpart to the older Palaiokastro on the nearby headland.…
A small Venetian fortress, raised at the close of the fifteenth century, once guarded the harbour of Naoussa on Paros. Its seawalls now lie beneath th…
The two small forts at Mandraki once guarded the naval station of Hydra during the Venetian occupation, a role they held from the late 16th century in…
The ancient city of Anthini, also known as Athini or Anthana, occupied a low coastal hill called Nisi, three kilometres northeast of Agios Andreas in …
The Bourtzi is a small island of some 30,000 square metres, sitting at the mouth of the harbour of Poros. Its defensive history reaches back to the By…
The Wall of Nicias is a partially preserved fortress near the Troizinia-Methana Municipality in the Argolid region of the Peloponnese. Built in antiqu…
The great Venetian fortress above Nafplio, begun in 1714 and finished in barely three years, a chain of eight self-contained bastions along a ridge so…
The Franks who overran the Peloponnese after the Fourth Crusade raised this castle in the mid-thirteenth century, choosing a spot already layered with…
The Chalandritsa Tower, a Frankish construction dating to 1216, stands in a condition described as not good. The structure is a remnant of the period …
The ancient fortress of Aigosthena stands in West Attica, near the coastal village of Porto Germeno and about 450 metres from the sea. It is generally…
The Dymaean Wall, also known as Kalogria Castle, is a prehistoric acropolis in western Achaea, some 35 kilometres west of Patra near the village of Ar…
Near Missolonghi in Aetolia, the Calydon Fortress preserves the layered remains of a stronghold whose story stretches from the Early Geometric era thr…
The Castle of Nafpaktos, known to history as Lepanto, is a Venetian stronghold whose present form dates largely from the first period of Venetian rule…
The Tower of Kirras stands close to the sea, a modest survivor of a port that once served Delphi. The ancient town of Kirra was important as Delphi's …
Rogoi occupies a hill above a bend in the Louros river, in the Filippiada area of Preveza. Its name derives from "arogi", meaning help, as it once she…
Skiathos Castle, or Kastro, occupies a peninsula on the island's north coast, a natural fortress that became the island's capital from the mid-14th ce…
On the banks of the Acheron in Epirus, near ancient Ephyra, stood a sanctuary the Greeks counted among the doorways to Hades. Here, where the Acheron,…
High above the Zagori landscape in northwestern Greece, the Skamneli acropolis preserves the footprint of a fortified stronghold whose story stretches…
The Eptapyrgion, better known by its Ottoman name Yedi Kule, stands at the north-eastern corner of Thessaloniki’s acropolis. Its Greek name means “sev…
Paliokastro of Kariani survives as little more than a scatter of stones on a low hill among the vineyards, the faint ghost of a Byzantine refuge. Thou…
Setina Fortress, or rather what remains of it, stands east of the village of Skopos in Florina prefecture, near the upland road to the Papadia dam. Th…
Perched at roughly 40.96° north, 24.53° east in northern Greece, Akondisma is a fortress shaped by many hands and many eras. Its mixed-period construc…
The Fortress of Petropigi stands about twenty kilometres east of Kavala, a small late-Byzantine staging post on the Via Egnatia. Its ancient name is u…
The Byzantine walls of Komotini are all that survives of a fortress-city raised in the early fourteenth century, probably around 1304-1305, after the …
Fort Roupel, or Ρούπελ, stands in the Sintiki Municipality as a well-preserved fortress first dated to 1914. Its concrete and steel construction marks…
The Koules of Vathiakos is one of the small forts, or “koules,” that the Ottoman Turks raised after 1886, in the wake of the Cretan revolution that ye…
The Venetians raised this castle on a rocky hill above the north Cretan shore, near Sitia and the village of Chamezi, at the close of the sixteenth ce…
The Koules of Spaniakos is one of the many small forts, known as “koules,” that the Ottomans raised across Crete in the wake of the 1886 Cretan revolu…
Spinalonga, a coastal fortress in the Gulf of Elounda, northeastern Crete, has been in relatively good condition since its Venetian construction began…
The Ottomans raised this fort in 1650 as a winter quarters for troops besieging Candia, the Venetian capital of Crete, during what became the longest …
Perched on the hill of Kefalas, west of Fodele, this small Ottoman fort dates from the 19th century, a period when Crete saw many such defensive works…
The Malaxa tower stands on a mountainous ridge above Souda Bay, where the terrain itself acts as a natural stronghold for the coast below. A Turkish k…
The Fortezza of Rethymno commands the Cretan coastline as one of the island's best preserved fortresses, begun in 1573 and shaped across centuries of …
At the southeast corner of Agia Marina’s harbour bay, beneath the mountain holding the Kastro tis Panagias, stands the Bourtsi, a small coastal fortre…
Homer called it Tiryns of the great walls, and the walls are still the point. This Bronze Age citadel near the Argive coast is wrapped in masonry up t…
The castle at Palia Epidavros is what remains of the acropolis of ancient Epidaurus, a hilltop fortification on the peninsula called “Nisi” above the …
The Daphni Monastery, an 11th century Byzantine foundation, is enclosed by fortifications that date from a later, Frankish phase, which is why the sit…
The Dema Wall stretches more than four kilometres across Attica, sealing a strategic gap between Mount Aigaleos and Mount Parnes. This ancient fortifi…
Pavlokastro is a Frankish fortification from the early 1390s, now reduced to a few stubborn fragments on a conical hill southeast of the village that …
The Castle of Elekistra is a small Frankish ruin on a slope of Mount Panahaikon, southwest of the village of Elekistra, on the edge of the Patras plai…
Koronisia Castle is a small but very well maintained fort standing on the island of Koronisia in the Ambracian gulf. It is the twin of the koules at L…
The Old Fortress occupies a rocky peninsula with two distinct hills on the eastern flank of Corfu's historic centre, one of a pair of defensive works …
A Venetian fortress on a rocky promontory that gave Corfu town its name, two peaks joined to the island by a moat cut through rock, the Contrafossa, w…
The Tower of Koutloumousiou monastery stands at the western end of the south wing, a sturdy defensive addition completed in 1508. The monastery itself…
The Byzantine fortifications of Kastoria were ordered by Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century AD, who recognised the strategic potential of the peni…
In the Volvi Municipality of northern Greece, the Vrasna fortifications preserve the layered traces of a mixed-era stronghold. Archaeological work bet…
The fortification at Maronia, on the southeastern coast of Thrace, survives only as a few remnants of a Roman-Byzantine defensive work at the port, ne…
High above the Malevizi countryside near Heraklion, this Byzantine fortress was raised to command and protect the surrounding region, its architecture…
High in the hills of Chania, near the village of Meskla, the Classical Fortress once stood guard over the surrounding region of Platania. Excavations …
High on Karpathos, the Byzantine fortifications known locally as Kastélli keep watch over the landscape below, a quiet reminder of medieval defence. B…
High above the harbour at Livadia on Tilos, the Byzantine fortress known as Castellos keeps watch over the coast below. Its stone walls, now partly co…
Perched on the island of Kos, Vriokastro Fortress is a Byzantine stronghold whose weathered walls recall an era when control of the Aegean depended on…
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