Photos of the Byzantine Mystras Churches & Monastery Ruins Greece

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Photos of the Byzantine Mystras Churches & Monastery Ruins Greece.The last stronghold of the Roman Byzantine Empire to fall in 1460. Photos by photographer Paul E Williams.  (TIP – use the icons below the slideshow for thumbnail photos and info)

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Photos of the Byzantine Mystras Churches & Monastery Ruins Greece

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Photos of the Byzantine City of Mystras ruins, Greece.

Foundation of Mystras

Mystras was established as a castle in 1205 by Prince William II Villehardouin to help consolidate his conquests in the Peleponese form the Byzantines. In September 1259, William of Villehardouin was defeated and captured by the Byzantines at the Battle of Pelagonia, by the forces of the Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos. Mystras remained under Byzantine rule and was the last Byzantine stronghold to fall. It was surrendered by Demetrius Palaeologus to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmen II in 1460.

Layout of Mystras

The City sits on a steep mountain slope of the edge of the valley of Sparti ( ancient Sparta) with a fortress at the top and the ruins of the Byzantine city & monasteries below, The extensive site is surrounded by a city wall. Under the despot Theodore, Mystras became the second most important city in the empire after Constantinople.

Centre of Byzantine Humanist art

The frescos in the Peribleptos Church, dating between 1348 and 1380, are a very rare surviving examples of late Byzantine Empire. They are crucial for the understanding the development of humanism in Byzantine art that fuelled later Renaissance art.

Mystras was also the last centre of Byzantine scholarship; the Neoplatonist philosopher George Gemistos Plethon lived there until his death in 1452. He and other scholars based in Mystras also influenced the Italian Renaissance, especially after he accompanied the emperor John VIII Palaiologos to Florence in 1439.

Mystras is a UNESCO World Heritage Site