"Follow the Guide" Mycenae Travelogue by amsterdam_vallon

The site was inhabited since Neolithic times (about 4000 BC) but reached its peak during the Late Bronze Age (1350-1200 BC), giving its name to a civilization which spread throughout the Greek world. During that period, the acropolis was surrounded by massive "cyclopean" walls which were built in three stages (ca.1350, 1250 and 1225 BC) except on its SE flank where a steep ravine provided natural defense.
A palace was built on the summit of the hill while towards the Argolic plain lay the wall - painted "Cult Center", the main gate or "Lion Gate" and "Grave Circle A" which contained the treasures now displayed at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. On the NE side, a tunnel leading to a subterranean fountain was built in "cyclopean" masonry in around 1225 B.C.
More tombs, "Grave Circle B", and large tholoi as well as houses were discovered outside the walls. Mycenae was occupied without interruption until 468 B.C. when it was conquered by the city of Argos and its population banished. It was reoccupied in the 3rd century B.C. for a relatively short period. It had been abandoned for some time when Pausanias visited the site during the 2nd century A.D.

General View of the Acropolis

From the entry looking up!!!

Cyclopean Wall and Lion Gate

This name often applied to a primitive method of prehistoric masonry construction, found throughout Greece, Italy, and the Middle East. The term is derived from Cyclopes, the mythological beings who were supposed to have built walls in this manner. The Cyclopean technique involves the use of huge, irregular boulders, carefully fitted together without the use of mortar, thereby creating a massive wall with an uneven face. These walls were characteristic of Mycenaean civilization.

Look at the size of the stone (compare with the people!!!) on the right

The famous Lion Gate at the citadel of Mycenae is an example of a tomb portal with forward-looking architectural decoration.

The Lion Gate

"...a massive trabeated portal was built into the wall, with cyclopean jambs and lintel, surmounted by a triangular relief of two heraldic lions standing at a (Minoan) column, the sacred symbol of the earth that they supposedly protected. For all its simplicity, the Lion Gate is of immense historical portent. The powerful sense of structure was an inheritance—ultimately Neolithic—that the Greeks would foster with exceptional refinement. Here, it was combined with the feeling for monumental stone carving in the Lion relief, an element inherited from Egypt but now infused with a new sensitivity to the organic logic and beauty of its subject."

—Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman. Architecture: from Prehistory to Post-Modernism. p80-81.

Steep Climb

Imagine this on rainy day!!!

Circle Grave A

Grave Circle A, Mycenae, c. 1600-1400 BC. Grave circle excavated by H. Schliemann and found to contain 13 cist graves bearing the remains and treasures of Mycenaean nobility (kings?). Whoever the personnages of Grave Circle A were, the conservation of their tombs was deemed so important by the inhabitants of Mycenae in 1200-1100 BC, that they deliberately constructed the massive Cyclopean walls around the Grave Circle to include it within the defenses, even while abandoning Grave Circle B and the Tholos Tombs outside.

Agamemnon's Palace

A steep path leads your climb through several ancient buildings and pathways, towards the palace where Agamemnon was murdered by his wife and her lover after he returned victorious from the Trojan war.

NE side

On this side you can access a 99 stairs secret stairway that bring you to a water citern. To resist long battle