Monemvasia at long last

It was the Green man who originally introduced me to Monemvasia, I think. It was early on, probabably 1992 or 1993 when I learned about the Green man in Zaraka in Stimphalia. It was a Cistercian monastery from the 13th century conquest and partitioning of Greece as part of the tshameful fourth crusade of 1204.The crusaders diverted to Constantinople and sacked it and then divided the whole area into feudal territories: the Frankokratia. Those western fiefdoms drew other Franks, including Cistercians who founded several abbeys. I'd been tracking the Cistercians for a few years already as I found that they seemed weirdly connected to the Green Man. They were a reforming order begun in Burgandy, wine country (Grapes, Dionysus, faces peeking out of grape leaves...), that eschewed deocration in their architecture, except that at Fountains Abbey and others in England, there were green men. Basically hardly any decoration, except this incredibly evocative face.

Green Man at Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire, England

There are several Cistercian monasteries in Greece, most notably two in the Peloponnese, and one also has a Green Man:

Green Man, Zaraka monastery, Sthimpahlia, Arcadia, Greece

I was hooked. That led to a fascination with examples where east meets west in Greece. The Frankish period is one example, and the Venetian's attempts to conquer Greece was a second. The Veneitans left behind a huge amount of text and maps and drawings of Greece from their forays in the 13th-16th centuries, including several of Corinth. They had a maritme empire and so were intersted in aquiring harbors, including Corinth and Monemvasia. They had an enormous impact on Greece at tthe time.They blew up the Parthenon in 1687 because they were laying siege and the Turks were using part of it as a gunpowder magazine. Anyway, I got interested in this fortified town on a bare rock deep in the Peloponnese, but it was too far away and too modern to have visited on any of the American School trips. We finally visited in 2014, but the upper town was closed.

So today was the fulfillment of what I described in 2014 as a "20-year quest". Now itw as 32 years.

We got up, I assembled all my assistive devices (various braces and a walking stick), and we set off. 

The mountain behind me. The goal was the very top!

First, up a road to the fortified entrance to the old town.

Next into the lower town, which was gorgeous and romantic.

The narrow streets and flowers...

We walked through the old town seeking one of the paths up to the upper town. Luckily All Trails was helpful.

Looking down, we quickly made some elevation

The steps were tricky. Note the flowers and the pithos (storage jar).

Looking down at the progress we were making.

This is the gate that was closed in 2014. It was open! And free entrance!

The lower town that we had traversed.

Wide angle view

We went everywhere: all the edges, the church, the castle, the cisterns, the fortifications, everything.

The lower fortifications

a cistern

Phil in one of the walls

View of the town from which we started, Gephira

Hamam (bath house)

Hamam from afar

Part of the upper town

The church

Remnants of paint inside the iconostasis

The other side of the iconostasis

The dome

Fig tree outside the church. They are so slow-growing... could be 500+ years old?

Looking straight down

Battlements

The long view

After exploring the upper town, we went into the lower town and did some shopping. Phil got a few alcohol treats and we got some really good gelato (the peach was new and so peachy!). 

It is a very hard place to live and work....

We wandered around for a couple of hours, and decided to go out to the lighthouse, looking for a Geocache. We made it to the lighthouse, but the geocache walk was on bare rocks with no guardrail or anything, right on the edge. 

We decided to head back to town and found a lovely spot with a view and had fresh squeezed juices. 

On the way back, we stopped at an interesting cemetary.

Yiannis Ritsos, a famous Greek poet

The box is literally called a "bone guard" and so probably contains the bones of the couple pictured.

The silver are bone boxes, and the white in front says it is a "bone container".

Another bone storage box, this one called a "bone guard"

I have long been fascinated with Greek death customs both from what my friends have describe and from what I read by Loring Danforth in his great books on the subject. I have written about it a lot in past years but the upshot is that people are buried for about 3 years, then exhumed and then the bones are put in some kind of an ossuary, mostly a community one, but here maybe in individual ossuaries.

Some of the themes of the day included finding lots of old pottery sherds, mostly Byzantine, we think:

Another theme was the incredible persistence of wild living things on these bare rock lands. 

The thistles right at the edge of the rock, windswept and salted.

Greeks put garden plants in wherever they can.

A baby fig tree finding its way

A VERY successful fig tree

The skinny Greek cats

:

Hungry things

We got home, relaxed, showered, and had ouzo hour on our deck. Then we decided to eat out tonight, so found a seaside taverna with a very traditional menu and a view of the fortress

19,992 steps later, we are home.