Mistra, Byzantine Capital of the Peloponnese

Mistra, the Byzantine capital of the Morea, or Peloponnese, whose ruins climb a foothill of the Taygetus mountains, was founded in the thirteenth century after the Frankish conquest of the peninsula. Sparta, a few miles away in the rich valley of the Eurotas, had been a famous city since the days of Helen of Troy and became the favourite residence of the Frankish princes.

To protect it from the untamed mountain tribes, William II of Villehardouin, Prince of Achaea, built in I249 a great castle on the summit of the hill which came to be known as Mistra. Ten years later at a battle in northern Greece he was defeated and captured by the Byzantine Emperor; and the terms for his release included the cession of Mistra to the Byzantine Greeks. Soon afterwards Mistra became the capital of the growing Greek province of the Peloponnese.

A city developed, to which the people of Sparta moved for greater protection during the continual warfare between the Franks and the Greeks. Princes of the Imperial family, with the title of Despot, were sent to govern the province. Under their rule Mistra became a notable centre of learning and the arts and a focal point for the cultural development of Europe as a whole. The Greek reconquest of the Peloponnese was only completed on the eve of the extinction of Byzantium by the Ottoman Turks and Mistra fell in 1460.

Thenceforward its history was one of slow decline, till it was half-destroyed by Albanian irregulars in the late eighteenth century and finally devastated by Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt during the Greek War of Independence. For many years the President of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, and a former Chairman of the Anglo-Hellenic League, Sir Steven Runciman is the foremost authority on Byzantine history and has written many highly acclaimed books on this period, including the History of the Crusades, which is widely regarded as a classic.

Second-hand / Good condition