Mystras by Zander

The inside of a Monastary in Mystras.

My dad taking a pictur of my mom taking a pictur of me in a Abbay in Mystras.

                In the Byzantine Empire lots of amazing city’s and fortress were built. The byzantine emperors were mostly Christian. All the city’s that I have been to from their Empire were built on hill tops, so they could be defended by the soldiers that were in the citadel. Mystras was part of the Byzantine Empire; it is located 7kms from modern Sparta. The Byzantine Empire had lots of beautiful cities; Mystras was amazing just like the other cities.

                Mystras was a very religious city. So they had a lot of Churches. In that time, the builders of the Churches weren’t very experimental.  All the churches that are from the Byzantine Empire all look the same. They are made of bricks, or parts of Greek temples. They are shaped like a rectangle, with a dome in the middle. Some of them have bell towers depending on how big they are. In Mystras there are 4 churches and 1 monastery. All the churches have frescoes, paintings that have paints made from precious stones. I have noted the same frescoes in the monasteries in their church’s’ first rooms. There are paintings of Christians getting tortured and killed by people from other religions. But in Muslim mosques, sometimes there are pictures of Christians killing people that don’t want to convert or ethnic cleansing Muslims. Byzantine cities always had religious buildings in there cities.  I have also notice that the churches all follow the same pattern for construction.

I met a donky in Mystras.

An inner sanctom of a Church.

                When the city of Mystras was built, the planners built it in a very strategic position so that it would be really easy to defend. Mystras is located on a steep hill top. The city is surrounded by walls. There is a draw bridge on the main gate of the city. There are towers all along the wall. There is a second layer of walls in the citadel. In the citadels, there are thick wall and towers. To get to the citadels, the attackers would have to walk along the wall, while the defenders shot and dropped rocks and arrows down at them. Then, they would have to batter down the gates while getting shot at. Since cannon balls and gun powder had not been invented when it was constructed in the early 13^th century (gunpowder was develop in Europe shortly after in the mid 13^th c.), Mystras was easy to defend. The Byzantines weren’t messing around when they were building their strongholds to protect their city.

Fortification in Mystras, the little holes are arrow slits.

                In the time of the Byzantine Empire, gun powder usage had not reached Greece. So building big forts was logical. To batter down walls of a fort, the attackers used catapults, ballasts, and siege towers.  The catapults would hurl rocks at the wall. The ballasts were like big bows and arrows. For the troops to take a wall, they would push a giant wooden tower up against the wall, and jump from their wooden tower to the wall, while they were struggling to batter down the wall. The defending soldiers would drop boiling oil, rocks, and shoot arrows down on the attacking troops. Once gun powder was invented, it was easier to shoot down walls then it was to build them. But for the time that Mystras was built, it had strong defenses that couldn’t be penetrated easily by the weapons of their time.

                The Byzantine Empire was made up of some wonderful cities that had lots of churches and strong fortifications. After the Greeks were no longer a target anymore, all the stone from their temples were used to build churches and forts for someone else. All the stones from the Greek temples and statues were pillaged and used for other people’s building projects. That is why in some of the cities that were built after the Greeks, the stones can be seen in other buildings. The Byzantine Empire no longer used big marble blocks. It was much easier to make all their buildings out of brick and mortar. Mystras was built to withstand long sieges, and had lots of churches so that people could worship their god.