Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE MYSTRA RENAISSANCE
Throughout the fourteenth century and the first decades of the fifteenth Mystra was the
principal cultural and intellectual centre of the Byzantine world, attracting the finest Byzantine
scholars and theologians and sponsoring a
renaissance
in the arts. Most notable of the court
scholars was the humanist philosopher
Gemisthus Plethon
, who revived and reinterpreted
Plato's ideas, using them to support his own brand of revolutionary teachings, which included
the assertions that land should be redistributed among labourers and that reason should be
placed on a par with religion. Although his beliefs had limited impact in Mystra itself - whose
monks excommunicated him - his followers, who taught in Italy after the fall of Mystra,
exercised wide influence in Renaissance Florence and Rome.
More tangibly, Mystra also was home to the final flourish of
Byzantine architecture
, with
the building of a magnificent palace for the despots and a perfect sequence of churches,
multi-domed and brilliantly frescoed.
2
briefly, by the
Venetians
. Decline set in with a second stage of Turkish control, from
1715 onwards, culminating in the destruction that accompanied the
War of
Independence
,
the site being evacuated after fires in 1770 and 1825.
Restoration
begun
in the first decades of the twentieth century was interrupted by the civil war - during
which it was, for a while, a battle site - and renewed in earnest in the 1950s when the
last inhabitants were relocated.
The Upper Town and Kástro
he
Kástro
, reached by a path direct from the upper gate, maintains the Frankish
design of its original thirteenth-century construction. There is a walkway around
most of the keep, with views of an intricate panorama of the town below. The castle
itself was the court of Guillaume II de Villehardouin but in later years was used
primarily as a citadel.
Ayía Sofía
Following a course downhill from the Kástro, the first identifiable building you come
to is the church of
Ayía Sofía
(1350). The chapel's finest feature is its floor, made from
polychrome marble. Its frescoes, notably a
Pandokrátor
(Christ in Majesty) and
Nativity
of the Virgin
, have survived reasonably well, protected until recent years by coatings of
whitewash applied by the Turks, who adapted the building as a mosque.
Palatáki and the Despot's Palace
Heading down from Ayía Sofía, you have a choice of routes. The right fork winds past
ruins of a Byzantine mansion, one of the oldest houses on the site, the
Palatáki
(“Small
Palace”; 1250-1300), and
Áyios Nikólaos
, a large seventeenth-century building
decorated with unsophisticated paintings. The left fork is more interesting, passing the
fortified
Náfplio Gate
, which was the principal entrance to the upper town, and the
vast, multistoreyed, Gothic-looking complex of the
Despots' Palace
(1249-1400;
closed at the time of writing, undergoing extensive rebuilding and restoration). Most
prominent among its numerous rooms is a great vaulted audience hall, built at right
angles to the line of the building; its ostentatious windows regally dominate the
skyline, and it was once heated by eight great fireplaces. Flanking one side of a square,
used by the Turks as a marketplace, are the remains of a
mosque
.
The Lower Town
At the
Monemvasiá Gate
, which links the upper and lower towns, there is a further
choice of routes: right to the Pandánassa and Perivléptos monasteries or left to the
Vrondohión monastery and cathedral, all very clearly signed. If time is running out, it
is easier to head right first, then double back down to the Vrondohión.
