Pictures of the Byzantine City of Mythras ruins, Greece. Images of the Byzantine Orthodox frescos & icons. Mystras established in 1205 after the conquest of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade by Prince William II Villehardouin & capital of the Byzantine Despotate of The Morea in the 14th & 15th centuries. Mystras was the last Byzantine stronghold surrendered by Demetrius Palaeologus to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmen II in 1460.
The City sits on a steep mountain...
more »Pictures of the Byzantine City of Mythras ruins, Greece. Images of the Byzantine Orthodox frescos & icons. Mystras established in 1205 after the conquest of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade by Prince William II Villehardouin & capital of the Byzantine Despotate of The Morea in the 14th & 15th centuries. Mystras was the last Byzantine stronghold surrendered by Demetrius Palaeologus to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmen II in 1460.
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 surrounded by a city wall. Under the despot Theodore Mystras became the second most important city in the empire after Constantinople, and William II's palace became the second residence of the emperors.
The frescos in the Peribleptos Church, dating between 1348 and 1380, are a very rare surviving late Byzantine cycle, crucial for the understanding the development of humanism in Byzantine art that fuelled the Renaissance in Western 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 influenced the Italian Renaissance, especially after he accompanied the emperor John VIII Palaiologos to Florence in 1439.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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