Top Greek Travel Destinations: Byzantine Mystras Page 2

The impregnable fortress that crowns its summit was built in 1249 by the Frank Guillaume II de Villehardouin, fourth Frankish Prince of Morea and Duke of Achaia, to control the region of Lakonia, and especially to protect it from marauding Slavs in the Tagetos region.

The hill on which it was built was called Mezythra (interestingly, the name-at least in modern Greek-- of a soft white Greek cheese made with goat's milk), which the Franks corrupted to Mystras (which meant 'mistress' in their dialect). The fortress was one of three built by Villehardouin, the others at Monemvasia and in the Maina castle in Mani (see the Mani).

The Franks were driven out by the Byzantines in 1262, after Villehardouin served three years in prison under the rule of Mikhalis Palaiologos, and was forced to surrender all three strongholds, but power struggles continued after that for a half century before before the Greeks reconquered the greater part of the Morea.

Monemvasia gave way to Mystras as central fortress, and from 1349 the peninsula was governed by various Byzantine despots (and was called the Despotate of Mystras).

As such, it was the last and largest province of the declining Byzantine Empire. The Turks took control in 1460, seven years after the fall of Constantinople, when the despot Demetrios, who had been feuding with his brothers, handed the city over to Sultan Mehmet II.

During its peak in the 14th and early 15th centuries, Mystras was the main cultural and intellectual center of the Byzantine world. Artists, scholars and theologians gathered here, some of them members of the imperial families such as the Cantacuzenes and Palaiologues.

The humanist philosopher Gemistus Plethon lived here from 1400-1442. It was he who revived and reinterpreted Platonic thought, which he used to support his own revolutionary ideas, including redistribution of land among the laborers, and the elevation of reason to the same status as religion.

The local monks excommunicated him, and his ideas had little local impact, but his followers taught in Italy after Mystras fell, and through them these ideas had wide influence in Renaissance Florence and Rome.

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