First stop was Mystra - an ancient byzantine citadel atop a very tall mountain about 6 miles South of Sparta. The site was gorgeous, though quite a hike for so early in the morning. This will be comprised mainly of pictures, as our Guide didn't have much to say about the site.
Atop the fortress pinnacle, looking down, down, down.
Another angle, doing much the same.
Wide shot, to give an impression of how expansive even this topmost part of the citadel is. The whole site took over 2 and 1/2 hours to skim. We barely scratched he surface of available ruins and reconstructed churches in that time.
Arch and pathway going down from the top.
Reconstructed bell tower.
Surviving fresco from the middle ages (exact date unknown) inside one church ruin.
More fresco in the same church. It's amazing how much remains!
Pathway going back up toward the top.
Reconstructed bell tower.
Same tower from beneath. This is actually part of a fully-functioning convent located within the ancient site. The nuns were quite sweet, as were the cats who live with them.
Near the bottom of the site, looking back toward the top. Did we really hike that? I don't recall.... We must have at some point, but it didn't feel like we went that far up.
Around 2:00 we finally left Mystra and headed for lunch in Sparta where we would be spending the rest of the afternoon. Everyone was starving by this point and really excited to take a walking tour of Ancient and Modern Sparta. We've all seen 300 of course, and after spending so long in Athens, we wanted to get a taste of the top rival to our home city-state, and find the biggest cliff face we could so we could take turns standing at the top and yelling "This is Sparta!"
Sparta, in fact, is...
...not what we were expecting.
It's a lovely little city, but there isn't much to it. It's built partly on top of the ancient city, like most modern towns around here, but the ancient city was unoccupied for over 1000 years before the modern city was founded, so the two really have nothing in common. Also, Mystra stole most of the Ancient Spartan ruins for it's expansive construction, so there isn't much of Ancient Sparta left to uncover or explore. Still, it was fun.
A statue of Leonidas in front of the modern stadium. They have some sense of city pride, anyway. The funniest thing about modern Sparta to me is that there is no tourist market whatsoever. I feel that if they just opened a few tourist shops and got the KTEL train to come here from Athens, Sparta could be a thriving tourist center, but they don't even try. It's probably smart not to invite that sort of activity into such a small, close knit town, but I would think that Greece as a whole would take about any source of outside income they could get these days...
"This is Sparta?" Well, an ancient Spartan theater, anyway, probably dating from the Roman era.
JK and I did a lot of exploring on our own in the Ancient Sparta site and did come across these wall paintings, pretty well preserved, in a corner. The British excavation team hasn't finished the site for decades, due mainly to lack of funding, so the site is pretty barren, but that also means that pottery shards are still just laying on the ground (no, we didn't pick any up - that's illegal, even if we were very tempted) and there are no guards, so we could sing and dance on the ancient, grass-covered stage as much as we wanted. And we stayed there and did just that until after sunset. :-)
One last comprehensive look at the ancient site. This theater is pretty much all they've uncovered, although they are pretty sure that they at least know where the agora is and will get around to it one day.
So, all in all, a good picture day, but not much in the way of new information or varied sites. We are spending this one night in Sparta, just to soak it in (and recover some much-needed sleep!) Tomorrow, bright and early, we head for Olympia to spend the day there!
Καληνύχτα!
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