Hello everyone! I hope you are doing great, it's so long since i made another travel post. I think now that summer is basically here it's the perfect opportunity for a post like that, especially after the pandemic. Now more than ever more and more people are willing to travel and i bet this tourist season will be quite unique.
Anyway, once again i will about Greece today. More precisely i will be talking about a castle as the title suggest but that castle isn't the only thing you can do/see in that area. Also, I've been there last summer on vacation, i think i spend half a day in that city.
The castle of Methoni is located in the city of Methoni (Μεθώνη in Greek) which is part of the Peloponnese. I used google maps to check how you can get there if you are visiting from another country and you can do the following.
You can take the airplane and come to kalamata which is where the blue line ends. From there it's just one hour by car and depending on what type of traveler you are, you can either book and stay in Methoni which is a nice little peaceful town or stay in kalamata which is a big city and travel around Peloponnese by car. You have more options but those are some of the main ones.
So according to the last stats, i could find that date back in 2011, 10 years ago the town of Methoni had around 1200 people. Now i speculate that the people living there are around 1000-1500 but during the summer season, you can expect to see way more people there.
One of the reasons is that many tourists are visiting as well as people that live in other parts of Greece, visiting their "mother" town to see their family and relatives. At the same time as you can see on the map, the town is basically surrounded by sea you can expect some nice beaches as well.
One of the things that Methoni is knows is the castle and trust me when i say this, it's one of the most beautiful castles we have in Greece. Even i that have visited numerous castles both in Greece and over the world were quite amazed by it. My friends that haven't seen a lot of castles in their lives felt completely out of breath.
The city of Methoni and the castle have a strong history as well. It's rumored according to Homer that Methoni was one of the 7 cities that Agamemnon gave to Achilles to make his anger stop. In the spot that now the castle is, there was a port that is said to have a significant value throughout the time like for example the marching in North Africa in 583.
Now later on the port was ruled by pirates and the Venetians during 1125 attacked and destroyed the city because they wanted to take revenge on their people that died or robbed by the pirates. The Venetians during the byzantine era earned some merchant rights so they could go to the port and trade stuff.
Later on, after the byzantine empire fell the Venetians took the city of Methoni under their rule and considered the city and the port very important to them to the extent that all the Venetian ships that traveled to easter Mediterranean had to make a stop there. These years as you can imagine the city thrived but later on here comes the ottoman empire.
During 1500 the city is ruled by them and up until 1715, the ottomans and Venetians were fighting for that city and port. The Greeks also tried to take the port back but they didn't manage to do so as the Ottomans had a strong defense there. After many many years, Greece took back the city and therefore the castle and port.
So the castle was around 93 acres long is divided into two parts. The first one which is at the south is the city which is surrounded by walls with towers and the Northside which has way better defense. Between these 2 sides, there is an additional wall with 5 towers.
The buildings that you will find there is a small church that is said to date back to the era of Venetians as well as a small building for the guns. Also, you can see some of the remains of the ottoman baths as well as the ones from a mosque. The top building is the Boutzi a small sea fortress, built-in small tongues dotted to the south of the castle. Effects of the appearance of an octagonal tower, carefully surround it with a solid octagonal wall. The tower is different and is available with a semi-cylindrical dome.
It was used as the headquarters of the guard to control the port, as a lighthouse, prison, but also a shelter for the inhabitants during sieges. Now the awesome thing is that you can actually go there and see every side of it which is pretty cool.
So you have seen the picture you know the history the only question is, do you think it's worth visiting? I asked that to myself before coming and without checking any pictured and i can say it was definitely worthed it. Also, it's really amazing that you can see in a single castle signs of 3 different civilizations maybe 4, like the Venetians, the ottoman empire, the byzantine empire and ancient Greece
All the photos have been taken by me and before anyone using them please ask me.
