Methoni Castle

 

Over the moat to the only entrance

As a card-carrying citizen, she is obliged to defend the ramparts

Main entrance with Lion of St. Mark

The moat is dry, but still ready for action

We learned from some friends that all museums and archaeological sites would have free entry this weekend, so we roused ourselves and headed to nearby Methoni to walk through the ancient castle.

"Medon" is referenced in Homer's Iliad, and the Hellenistic travel writer Pausanias offers the best descriptions of this citadel. The castle was first occupied during the prehistoric period; then in Hellenistic and Byzantine times; then came the Venetians, the world's premier seafaring nation; and finally the Ottoman Turks. The Greeks regained Methoni in the late 1820s, with the help of a combined fleet of Imperial Russia, Great Britain, and France.

 

Pathway to the final readout--the last stand when all else is lost

The bourtzi--perfect place for decapitations...and weddings

Fashionably dressed for defending the seawall

The promontory at the end of the modern town of Methoni is the site of castle that has been occupied since antiquity—by Greeks, Venetians, Ottoman Turks, and then regained by Greeks in the 1820s. Each siege and capture was followed by bloody reprisal. It is a place steeped in the blood of many.

 

The most profound and obvious stamp is that of the Venetians, who controlled the sea routes to Holy Lands during the early Middle Ages and transported the armies of the Second and Third Crusades to Jerusalem, using a series of castles that dot this region of Greece as stopping off points. There are four well preserved castles within a twenty minute drive of our house.

 

At the end of the promontory is the bourtzi, an octagonal structure that was used as a prison, a last holdout should the inner castle be breached, a place of execution, and today—a place where couples are married.

 

Main gate

Holding back the hordes, including 45s supporters

Room with a view--but it will cost you more than the Athens Hilton

When the castle was overrun by the Ottomans (my grandfather, who was born a subject of the sultan called them “the evil and vicious Turks”) in the later Middle Ages all of the male defenders were marched to the bourtzi, where they were summarily decapititated. The women were sold into sexual slavery; the children into “ordinary” slavery or were forced to convert to Islam.

 

For the people of this region, this hideous history occurred yesterday. The memory of this atrocity, like those that happened during World War II, are a part of the living memory of adults and children alike.

 

After a big day of self-defense

There is grisly comic quality (for me, at least) that a place of gruesome execution is now a place of wedding celebrations.

 

Our perambulations in the early morning, before the sun and heat became unbearable.