Fort of Laskara: An Ottoman Frontier Fortification in Greece
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Greece
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Modern
- Civilizations
- Ottoman
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Fort
On this page6 sections
History
The Fort of Laskara, also called the Koulia of Laskara, is a late Ottoman fortification in Greece, near Agios Thomas. The Ottoman Empire, the imperial state that controlled the surrounding region during its construction, probably built it around 1860 as part of a defensive line protecting the new frontier between Ottoman territory and Greece. That frontier had been established by the Treaty of Constantinople, a nineteenth-century diplomatic agreement that defined the boundary in this area.
The 1897 war
Before the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, the Ottomans added a small artillery emplacement near the fort. They installed a Krupp gun, made by a major German arms manufacturer, described as measuring 0.8 cm. At the beginning of the conflict, the gun fired the first shot against the passenger vessel Macedonia as it sailed from the Ambracian Gulf toward Actium. The captain guided the ship to shore, but it eventually caught fire.
The fort was put out of action during the first days of the war, when Greek artillery fired successfully from Cape Kefali Panagias in Acarnania. The artillery fire caused the tiled roof to collapse and contributed to the later ruined condition of the structure.
Abandonment and protection
The fort is now abandoned but remains relatively well preserved. Its distance from Preveza and the difficult terrain around it helped shield the building from the large-scale removal of construction material that affected other forts within the city.
On 18 November 2003, citizens of Preveza submitted a signed request to the Eighth Ephorate of Modern Monuments, a regional government office responsible for supervising and documenting heritage sites, seeking protected-monument status for the building. Archaeologists from Patras visited Preveza in December 2003 to document it. Under Greece’s 2002 archaeological law, all Greek castles and forts were automatically designated protected monuments.
Remains
The fort occupies the summit of rocky Laskara Hill, also called Turkovouni, at approximately 146 to 150 metres above sea level. The hill stands at the end of the Laskara Peninsula, within the Saint Thomas Peninsula, which was known in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as Skafidaki. The surviving defensive structure is organized around a central cylinder with two semicylindrical additions attached to its eastern and western ends.
Main defensive structure
The central cylinder measures approximately 9 metres in diameter. Its walls contain two levels of loopholes, narrow openings through which defenders could fire while remaining partly protected. One row is positioned low and the other high. The wall has collapsed at two or three points, while the tiled roof fell during the Greek artillery attack of 1897. The fort’s geometry is exactly the same as that of the Koulia of Koronisia, a comparable fortification built around 1860 in the Arta area on the Ambracian Gulf. The Koronisia fort has been extensively restored.
Guardhouse and approach
A ruined building stands a short distance northwest of the fort. It served as the guardhouse for the Ottoman garrison. A paved path formerly connected the fort with its approach, although most of the path has disappeared.
Nearby sites
