Winding up the lushly vegetated hillside, Mystras is a remarkably intact Byzantine town through which you can now wander. Winding alleys lead through monumental gates, past medieval houses, palaces and above all into the churches, several of which yield superb if faded frescoes. The overall effect is of straying into a massive unearthing of architecture, painting and sculpture – and into a different age with a dramatically different mentality.
In 1249, Guillaume II de Villehardouin, fourth Frankish prince of the Moreas, built a castle here – one of a trio of fortresses (the others at Monemvasiá and Máni) designed to garrison his domain. The Franks, however, were driven out of Mystras by the Byzantines in 1262, and by the mid-fourteenth century this isolated triangle of land in the southeastern Peloponnese, encompassing the old Spartan territories, became the Despotate of Mystras. This was the last province of the Greek Byzantine empire and, with Constantinople in terminal decay, its virtual capital.
Source: Rough guides
