Monemvasia

 

The Greek name is Monemvasía, which means “the single entrance.” Venetian merchants called the place Malvasia, and that is how medieval Europe learned to say it. The rock is in Greece, on the east coast of Laconia in the Peloponnese.

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monemvasia

Founded
An earthquake in 375 CE tore this slab of limestone away from the Laconian shore. In 582 or 583, during the reign of the emperor Maurice, people from inland Lacedaemon climbed onto it to escape Slavic and Avar raids. The upper town was settled first. The lower town, pressed between the cliff and the sea, grew later.

Quote
“But as he was rounding Malea, the wave and current and the North Wind beat him back and drove him past Cythera.”
— Homer, Odyssey 9.80–81

Cape Maleas lies about fifteen nautical miles south of here. Homer never names this rock. He names the cape that begins as soon as you leave its shelter.

History

Monemvasia is not a classical city that happens to stand near a harbour. It is what this coast did when the old cities of the Peloponnese could no longer protect the people who lived in them. The first families on the plateau were refugees. They chose a place that could not be walked around.

For a sailor the approach still explains the architecture. The rock is roughly a kilometre long and three hundred metres across. The seaward faces are too steep for an army. The only practical landing is on the mainland side, where a short causeway now joins the village of Gefyra to a single vaulted gate in a high wall. Once you are through that gate you are in the lower town: one main street running east, houses stacked against each other, the sea always close on the south side. Churches occupy whatever pocket of level ground the slope allows. You will notice a Byzantine wall, a Venetian doorframe, and the outline of an Ottoman conversion without anyone needing to put a sign on them.

By the tenth century the Byzantines were treating Monemvasia as a naval and commercial station on the long run between Constantinople and the west. Arabs and Normans failed to take it. After the Fourth Crusade the Franks of the Principality of Achaea finally starved the garrison out in 1248 and 1249. The Byzantine Despotate of the Morea recovered the rock in 1262. Through all of that the port kept shipping the sweet wine that western ledgers called Malmsey or Malvasia, which is only an Italian attempt to pronounce the place-name. The same cliffs that sent the barrels out also sheltered corsairs.

After Constantinople fell in 1453, Monemvasia was one of the last Byzantine holdings left in the Peloponnese. Thomas Palaiologos could not defend it. The rock passed to Pope Pius II and then, in 1463, to Venice. Venice held it from 1463 to 1540 and again from 1690 to 1715. The Ottomans held it in the years between. No one ever took the gate by storm. The town changed hands by blockade, famine, and treaty. In July 1821 it became the first fortress in the Peloponnese to come over to the Greek cause.

What you walk now is that whole sequence in an afternoon. The lower town is inhabited again. There are rooms for the night and a few tables in the street. The upper town is a climb: a steep, worn path to the plateau, a lot of wind, and the church of Agia Sophia sitting on the cliff edge as if it had been set down on the bow of a ship. The climb is worth it even on a hot day. The view from the church is the reason anyone ever thought this rock could be a town.

If you are bound south from here, look at Maleas as its own problem. The citadel is shelter. The cape is the passage that turned Odysseus around.

Location
Monemvasia, Laconia, Peloponnese, Greece. The mainland village at the west end of the causeway is Gefyra.

Coordinates
Harbour and small marina, WGS84: 36° 41.09′ N, 023° 02.39′ E
The gate on the rock: 36° 41.16′ N, 023° 03.20′ E
The bay to the north, often called Palaia Monemvasia: 36° 43.8′ N, 023° 02.1′ E

From the water
The rock reads as an island until you are close enough to see the causeway. At sunset the western face goes into shadow while the crown holds the last light. You will almost certainly take a photograph before the lines are made fast. That is the right instinct. This is one of the few sites in the guide that is the harbour view rather than a taxi ride inland.

Cruising access
The working harbour is at Gefyra, immediately west of the causeway. From the quay it is a short walk across the bridge to the gate. Shops, a bakery, and the usual provisions are on the mainland side, which is useful, because the lower town on the rock is prettier and more expensive.

There is a ferry mole north of the bridge. It can be a reasonable alongside berth in settled weather and an uncomfortable one when the meltemi is blowing. If the harbour is crowded or the swell is wrapping in, the bay a few miles north offers a fair-weather alternative and puts you closer to the older ruins at Epidauros Limera.

Set the anchor with some care. Parts of the harbour bottom are rock and weed, and the hook should be watched until you trust it. At night the hills can send down gusts that are harder than the afternoon forecast suggested. Water on the quay has sometimes been brackish. None of this is a reason to pass the place. It is only a reason not to treat the harbour as a marina in the Italian sense.

You can dinghy to the causeway from a nearby anchorage in settled conditions. The rock itself is closed to cars. Once you are at the gate, you are on foot.

Museum
The archaeological collection in the lower town is small and worth an hour when the plateau is too hot. It holds icons, marble, and finds from the rock and from Epidauros Limera.

Practical notes
Leave any hired car in Gefyra. Start the climb to the upper town early or late; there is almost no shade on the path. If you are heading south the next morning, give Cape Maleas its own weather window. The old advice about staying well off that headland is still good.

Pilot books
Rod Heikell’s Greek Waters Pilot covers Monemvasia in detail. In the fourteenth edition the plan is around page 248. Check the current supplement, because the harbour has been extended since some older copies were printed.

From here
The classical ruins at Epidauros Limera lie a few miles to the north and are the ancient city that belongs to this stretch of coast. If you continue south, Kythira and Elafonisos are the next harbours after you have rounded Cape Maleas. Mystras is a different kind of day. You will need a car from Gefyra, but the ruined Byzantine city in the hills is the inland counterpart to the rock you have just walked.

“But as he was rounding Malea, the wave and current and the North Wind beat him back and drove him past Cythera.”
— Homer, Odyssey 9.80–81