Fortifications of Mycenae: The Defensive Circuit of a Mycenaean Citadel
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Greece
- Primary era
- Bronze Age
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Bronze Age, Classical
- Civilizations
- Ancient Greek, Mycenaean
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Wall
On this page19 sections
History
The Fortifications of Mycenae in Greece enclosed a major Mycenaean citadel built during the second millennium BC on a hill overlooking the northeastern Argolid plain. The settlement controlled routes through the Dervenakia pass toward the Corinthian Isthmus and mainland Greece, while the walls protected the palace complex at the center of political authority.
Early occupation and the first enceinte
The hill was occupied from the late Neolithic and Early Helladic periods, around 3200–3000 BC. A substantial royal residence or palace was established during the Middle Helladic period, and earlier walls associated with it were once interpreted as an early fortification. In 1961, George Mylonas demonstrated that this wall was instead a retaining structure.
The first substantial defensive circuit was constructed during Late Helladic IIIA2, around 1340 BC, at the beginning of Mycenae’s palatial peak. Late Helladic is the archaeological term for the Mycenaean Bronze Age on mainland Greece. The new enceinte, or enclosing defensive circuit, followed the limestone outcrop and surrounded the palace area. Its position reflected the citadel’s control of the Argolid plain and important commercial routes.
Expansion during the palatial period
A major enlargement took place around 1250 BC, during the early Late Helladic IIIB period. The southern wall was moved approximately 50–60 metres westward and southward, increasing the fortified area by nearly 40 percent. The expansion brought new buildings and Grave Circle A within the citadel and created the monumental Lion Gate as the principal entrance.
About fifty years later, around 1200 BC, the northeastern end of the circuit was remodeled and extended to protect access to an underground cistern. Because the hill had no spring, control of this water source was important during a siege. This was probably the final major Mycenaean building phase at the site, although its exact relationship to the destructions of the period remains uncertain.
Destruction and the post-palatial settlement
Mycenae suffered major destruction in two successive episodes between approximately 1230 and 1180 BC. Buildings destroyed at the end of Late Helladic IIIB1, around 1230 BC, have been attributed archaeologically to an earthquake. A later catastrophe at the end of Late Helladic IIIB2, around 1200–1180 BC, involved one or more extensive fires. The wider collapse remains debated, with external attacks, internal conflict, earthquakes, and fire all proposed as contributing factors.
These events ended the palatial period and began the post-palatial Late Helladic IIIC period. The hill was briefly reoccupied, then destroyed again around 1100–1080 BC. Many inhabitants left, and Mycenaean cultural features gradually declined. A small but relatively continuous occupation nevertheless remained during the Protogeometric and Geometric periods.
Argive domination and later occupation
By the beginning of the Classical period, Mycenae had become a minor city dominated by Argos, a major ancient city in the northeastern Peloponnese. Mycenae sent 80 men to Thermopylae in 480 BC and, together with Tiryns, contributed 400 soldiers to the Greek army at Plataea in 479 BC.
Argos attacked and besieged Mycenae in 468 BC. Famine forced the city to surrender, after which the Argives destroyed or dismantled the settlement and its fortifications and enslaved or exiled its inhabitants. In the Hellenistic period, the Argives established a small fortified settlement dependent on Argos among the ruins. Parts of the walls were repaired, and the hill became part of an Argive defensive line during conflicts involving the Achaean League, a later confederation of Greek cities, and Sparta. The duration of this occupation is uncertain, and the site was gradually abandoned.
Myth, rediscovery, and archaeological investigation
Ancient tradition attributed Mycenae’s foundation to Perseus, the son of Zeus and Danae, and credited the Cyclopes, mythical giants associated with extraordinary strength, with building its massive walls. Homer described Mycenae as a strong and well-built city and named its king Agamemnon as leader of the Achaeans. Another tradition held that Tisamenus, Agamemnon’s grandson and the last king of Mycenae, was defeated by the Dorians under the Heraclid Temenos. The city was then said to have been burned and brought under Argive influence.
In the second century AD, the Greek writer Pausanias described Mycenae when only parts of the defensive circuit and the gate with two lions remained visible. In 1700, the Venetian engineer Francesco Grimani identified the Lion Gate using Pausanias’ description. Travelers increasingly visited the ruins from the eighteenth century, while early nineteenth-century excavation and collecting led to the removal of several hundred objects by Lord Elgin and Lord Sligo.
The Archaeological Society of Athens placed the site under its protection in 1837, and Kyriakos Pittakis cleared the Lion Gate and its forecourt in 1840. Heinrich Schliemann began excavating Mycenae in 1874, concentrating on the tombs near the gate. Initial excavations are also dated to 1841, while detailed archaeological study expanded during the 1870s.
Christos Tsountas directed the first systematic excavations from 1886 to 1902. The British School at Athens, under Alan Wace, worked at Mycenae in 1920–1923, 1938, and 1950–1955. The Archaeological Society of Greece resumed excavations in 1950 under Ioannis Papadimitriou, followed by joint British and Greek campaigns from 1957 to 1969 under Lord William Taylour and George Mylonas. From 1985 to 2013, Elizabeth French directed the British work and Spyros Iakovidis the Greek work. Investigation of the fortifications and their surroundings established the chronology of the citadel’s occupation and expansion. The fortifications form part of the Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns, which UNESCO added to the World Heritage List in 1999.
Remains
The enceinte follows the natural limestone outcrop for approximately 900 metres and encloses about 30,000 square metres at the summit of the citadel hill. The walls are 5–8 metres thick, while their original height is unknown because the uppermost course has not survived. The highest surviving Mycenaean masonry reaches 8.25 metres near Grave Circle A. Most of the circuit remains, although a section of the southern wall collapsed into the Chavos ravine during a landslide, carrying part of the palace megaron, the principal hall of a Mycenaean palace, with it.
Construction and defensive circuit
Three construction techniques appear in the walls. Cyclopean masonry uses exceptionally large limestone blocks, roughly worked or left unworked, with smaller stones and clay filling the gaps. The inner core contains smaller stones, earth, and rubble. Along the inner face, a construction-free strip formed a peribolos, an enclosed passage beside a defensive wall that allowed controlled circulation. Additional buildings gradually occupied this space, continuing into the Hellenistic period.
Pseudo-isodomic masonry, which uses roughly regular courses of blocks, faces the walls near both principal gates and at the southeastern corner near the House of Columns. The conglomerate blocks were sometimes saw-cut but were more often shaped with a hammer. One block near the Lion Gate measures 3 metres long and 1.90 metres high. This facing gave the walls a more formal appearance and offered fewer handholds than the irregular Cyclopean construction. The yellow-ochre color of freshly cut conglomerate may have contributed to Homer’s description of “golden Mycenae.”
Polygonal masonry, made from fitted stones with irregular joints, belongs to the Hellenistic period rather than the Mycenaean construction phases. It appears at the northeastern corner, in the Lion Gate bastion, and in the middle of the southern wall, where it repaired sections damaged during or after the Argive capture of 468 BC. An 18-metre-high polygonal element known as the Polygonal Tower does not project from the wall line. Its height has been proposed as evidence for the original height of the enceinte, but that interpretation remains uncertain.
Original circuit and southern expansion
First enceinte
The original enceinte of around 1340 BC followed the limestone rock through abrupt changes of direction. It ran beside the Chavos ravine, turned west near the palace, passed around the palace on the south, and reached the northwestern end near the later Lion Gate. Grave Circle A stood outside this first circuit, most of whose southern wall was demolished during the later enlargement.
The position of the first main entrance is uncertain because it lay somewhere in the section removed during the mid-thirteenth-century expansion. Christos Tsountas placed it in the middle of the southern wall, while George Mylonas proposed a position near the later Lion Gate, on the opposite side of the original Cyclopean wall. Excavations in the 1950s and 1960s revealed three earlier ramps beneath the present approach, including one Middle Helladic ramp and one Late Helladic ramp ascending from south to north. A second, probably smaller, postern, or secondary gate used for limited access or sorties, stood at the northeastern corner of the original fortification.
Lion Gate
The second enceinte of around 1250 BC moved the southern wall westward and southward. Its principal monument is the Lion Gate, a massive entrance formed by four monoliths. The opening is 3.10 metres high and 2.95 metres wide, narrowing to 2.78 metres at the lintel.
Above the lintel, the relieving triangle, a triangular opening that reduces the load carried by the lintel, contains a carved limestone slab. Two confronted rampant lions flank a column, with their forepaws resting on two double-concave altars. The relief is regarded as the oldest monumental sculpture in Greece. Its meaning has been interpreted as decorative, religious, or heraldic, with proposed associations including protection of a sanctuary or royal family and an alliance between two royal families or kingdoms. Comparable imagery appears on Minoan and Mycenaean jewelry, rings, and frescoes.
Lion Gate bastion
A rectangular bastion, a projecting defensive structure protecting the face and approach of a wall or gate, formed the forecourt of the Lion Gate. It measures 14.80 metres long and 7.23 metres wide. Its arrangement narrowed the number of attackers approaching the entrance and exposed their right side to defenders on the bastion. This gave the defenders a tactical advantage because warriors normally carried shields on the left arm.
The Cyclopean wall around the forecourt was faced with pseudo-isodomic conglomerate. Several blocks are misaligned, probably because of one or more earthquakes, and gaps between displaced blocks were filled with small, roughly shaped limestone pieces. In the Hellenistic period, the bastion was rebuilt with small, carefully assembled limestone blocks and a curved plan rather than the original rectangular form.
When the second enceinte was built, the approach ramp was reversed so that it passed north of Grave Circle A. The royal tombs were thereby brought inside the fortified area, an arrangement interpreted as a possible commemoration of the ancestors of the Mycenaean kings.
Northern entrance and palace defenses
North Gate
The northern wall rests directly on limestone bedrock, while the western wall stands on a thick layer of yellowish clay mortar over conglomerate bedrock. George Mylonas regarded this difference as evidence of a technological innovation during Late Helladic IIIB.
The northern entrance, called the Postern Gate by Heinrich Schliemann and also known as the North Gate, is a smaller copy of the Lion Gate. It is built of pseudo-isodomic conglomerate and protected by a bastion, but it lacks a relieving triangle. The gate is generally considered contemporary with the Lion Gate and western wall, although it may be slightly later. Two smaller posterns lay farther east.
House of Columns reinforcement
At the southeastern corner, pseudo-isodomic masonry reinforced the fortification beside the palace extension, particularly the complex known as the House of Columns. The reinforcement formed part of the relationship between the defensive circuit and the palace buildings within the citadel.
Northeastern extension and cistern
Cistern gallery
The final extension, built at the northeastern end around 1200 BC, enclosed the underground cistern and protected its access. The new Cyclopean wall was described by Nikolaos Platon as resembling a dog’s head. The cistern had probably existed before the extension and was cut into softer conglomerate just outside the new walls.
Its access gallery passes directly through the northern wall and descends in three zigzagging sections to a depth of about 18 metres. The first section has 19 limestone steps and ends at a conglomerate door similar in design to the North Gate. A rectangular landing leads to a second door on the left and 20 steps descending westward. Another landing leads to three small steps toward the north, after which the passage turns at a right angle and descends eastward by 60 steps to the cistern.
Water chamber and posterns
The cistern measures 1.60 by 0.70 metres and is 5 metres deep, giving it a stated capacity of about 5 cubic metres. Terracotta pipes connected it to a spring of the Perseia stream approximately 100 metres outside the walls. The cistern walls and the third section of the gallery were coated with thick plaster, and this part of the gallery functioned as an extension of the cistern.
About 2.50 metres from the gallery entrance, a postern in the northern wall allowed soldiers to sortie against attackers approaching the North Gate or cistern tunnel. Another postern through the southern wall of the extension led to a platform overlooking the Chavos ravine and probably served for diversion and surveillance. Its small size and the limited dimensions of the platform made the position readily defensible. A possible third postern in the eastern wall may have been blocked during the fifth-century BC conflict with Argos.
Later occupation and repairs
The upper defenses have not survived, so the original presence of a palisade or crenellations is unknown. Unlike the fortifications at Tiryns, the enceinte has no galleries or casemates within its thickness. At least three storerooms and passages were cut into the northern wall, probably imitating arrangements at Tiryns. These features may belong to the northeastern extension of around 1200 BC rather than to the original construction.
After the Late Helladic IIIB destructions, the condition of the circuit changed. The facing of the Lion Gate’s outer court was damaged, apparently by one or more earthquakes, and the gaps between displaced blocks were filled with small limestone pieces.
Later installations occupied the peribolos and the wall itself. The building known as the Granary, constructed against the wall between Grave Circle A and the Lion Gate, contained large quantities of Late Helladic IIIC pottery and evidence of violent destruction by fire at the end of that period. Storerooms cut into the northwestern wall also show occupation during Late Helladic IIIC.
During the Hellenistic period, Argive repairs used polygonal masonry. They included reconstruction of the Lion Gate bastion, repairs to the southern wall and northeastern extension, and the polygonal work represented by the Polygonal Tower. Elizabeth French proposed that the reconstructed bastion may conceal an earlier gate destroyed by the Argives.
