Mystra, Peloponnece Greece

Mystra is both a city and a fortification dated back to the Middle age. The fortress is located at the top of the hill where the city itself is situated. The fortress is built in the period between 1249 and 1262. The city below has been built as a result of more and more people moving to the area. Over the years many churches has been built, and today you can still see the magnificent wall paintings that covers most of the inside of most of the churches. It’s surpassingly because of these wall paintings the churches are so well preserved. In fact there is not very much else that’s taken care of, there is mostly empty shells and walls and remaining of a lot of buildings over a large area. However, there is an area called "The Palace" that’s now being reconstructed. There are several buildings that have been worked on for some years. Mystra also has a convent that is inhabited. This is where we found the cats that you can see on the next web-page.

Here you can see the fortress on the top of the hill, the church on the lower left side is called Hodegtria. Above the middle you can see the reconstructed "The Palace"

This is the path toward the convent Pantanassa. Here you can see what it is most of at Mystra, lot of walls and remaining of the Middle age buildings. In the horizon you can see the big plain where today’s city of Sparta is located.

This picture shows Metropolis, which is the first church you see after entering through the main entrance. Travel report day 6 (Wednesday April 19th 2000) We are now in the city of Sparta. About 6 km from here, the ruin city of Mystra is located. Mystra is one of Peloponnesus most fantastic places. We drove all the way to the top, but decided to make a new attempt tomorrow. The reason is that the weather has not been on our side today. It has been a lot of rain. Thunder and lightning, and very cloudy throughout the day.
Because Mystra is situated in a hill with a beautiful view over a valley and we did not see anything but a grey wall, we decided to try again tomorrow. Luckily the rain has stopped and the clouds are higher than the mountain (2400 m) nearby. Hopefully it will be like this tomorrow as well, preferably with some sunshine. The temperature today has been between 14ºC and 22ºC, so it is not cold. Just before I arrived at the Internet café it was 17ºC and the time is 10.00 p.m. That was all for today, let us hope for better weather tomorrow, even though the weather forecast indicates another rainy day. But as the host at our hotel said: "In Greece the weather do not last for more than one day". Let us hope he meant the bad weather!	Mystra is situated about the middle of Peloponnesus. Here the weather changes between rain and sun. This makes the place very vigorous. Plants and flowers were growing everywhere.

I decided to show you a few pictures of the churches, and hopefully you can see how vigorous it was when we were here. The church on the top is called Evangelista, the next one with the big dome is SS Theodore. Travel report day 7 (Thursday April 20th 2000) In the last report we had reached the city of Sparta and the area Mystra. Here is a big city/fortification which they started to built in the year 1249. Throughout the time it has been enlarged several times, then burnt down again when it was captured by the enemy and rebuilt again. Today it is a ruin city, but with many well preserved and reconstructed ruins. Especially the churches and the palace are very well reconstructed. The city has a very nice location in a steep hill, with a beautiful view over the valley/plain down below. A little further away there are mountains over 2400 m high. At this time of the year it is still snow on the tops. Unfortunately the weather was not good when we visited the area, the mountains where covered in clouds. Most of the time it was cloudy, but we did see the sun occasionally. When we reached the upper castle, we were surprised by an impervious rain shower. Luckily the opening in the wall was watertight, so we had a dry place to stand the 15 minutes the shower lasted. At this place it was even more vigorous than the other places we have visited. Beside one of the churches, or maybe it was a convent, we met a lot of tame cats. They where obviously used to be fed by the visitors. Because we have our own cat, and love cats generally, we took a lot of pictures. We liked this place so much that we stayed until the gates closed at 15.00.

The upper picture is Hodegetria and the lower is St. Sophia.

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Thanks to Terje Pedersen, Løten Norway for his translation into English!
© Jan Bergtun, 15. June 2001	Updated, 12.20.2007
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