Tiryns, Nafplio

Archeological site from the ancient Greeks that's pretty well preserved. Only 2 euro to get in then you're free to walk around and explore, we spent about 45 minutes total. Plenty of free parking and it's only a 10 minute ride from nafplio.

Strengthened and in a good mood, we now go to the excavations of Tiryns (UNESCO World Heritage Site), only a few kilometers away. Schliemann swung his spade here in 1876 and the German Archaeological Society has been conserving and restoring here since 1967. The 725-meter-long Mycenaean fortification walls on the rock plateau, which is only a few meters high, are particularly powerful at up to 17 meters high and 8 meters wide. The largest individual blocks weigh 13 tons. Afterwards we drive to a nearby orange grove, where a small but well-preserved Mycenaean tholos tomb slumbers.

Tiryns is a very underrated Mycenaean site I think because it lacks the place held by Homer in Mycenae, Sparta, Pylos and Odysseus’ Ithaca, wherever that may be. But it is a fascinating site full of mysteries and many more questions than answers. And it is rather accommodatingly close to Napflios, and worth an hour or two stop either in your way there, or in your way way from. It’s easy to see why earlier visitors bought into the Cyclops builder story. It’s hard not to wonder how Bronze Age technology managed building these massive fortresses with such large, heavy stone well before the invention of the pulley and the crane. But they did all over Greece and beyond. Tiryns besides being yet another massive Mycenaean fortress has a sense of aesthetics to it, whether by some of the colorful stone used or by employing interesting tunnels and hidey-holes. There is a reason it seems to have survived the dissolution that occurred at the end of the Bronze Age and had a significant population present until well into the Iron Age. Whatever the reason, it’s worth a visit.

It is part of very old history and unfortunately not as extensive and well preserved as Mykini (Mycenae) yet visit them both and marvel at what people are capable of and given time how destructive w can be through war and our own importance. Great pity that we always repeat the same cycle.

As a big lover of Homer’s Iliad, I have visited most of the known Mycenaean sites mentioned in the catalogue of ships. Tiryns with its massive walls and remarkably well preserved architectural remains is without a doubt one of the most impressive.