On a rocky buttress of Taygete region, the Mystras city of the 13th century, occupies an exceptional site.
Its Byzantine churches, monasteries, palates and houses in ruins testify about the size of the old capital of the Despot of Morea from the 14th and the 15th centuries.
The fort, at 621 m height, was built since 1249 by Guillaume de Villehardouin, from Champagne, prince of Morea and duke of Achaïe. But this last one was captured in 1259 by the troops of the emperor of Byzantium to whom he had to yield Mystras and other fortresses.
Then, Mystras became the seat of the Byzantine 
governor of the province, then during the 14th and 15th centuries, under the dynasties of Cantacuzene and Paleologue, it was the center of the despotat of Morea directed by the members of the family of the emperor, on a territory which extended to the main part of Peloponnese.
The intellectual glare of Mystras was important, hearth of a hellenic rebirth. Many palates, churches and monasteries were built. The city was delivered to Turkish in 1460. Under the Ottoman domination, it remained prosperous thanks to its production of silk. More than 40.000 inhabitants lived there in the 17th century. Set in fire in 1770 by Russian, then in 1780 by Albanian, the city loose most of its inhabitants, and is definitively abandoned during the war for independence. .
