Modern Historical Greece
While history and sites to explore to learn more about Ancient Greece are definitely what drew us to this country, there is so much other history that is fascinating to learn about here. While we were in Valira, we made sure to tour a few other fascinating historical areas of interest.
Valentina, our lovely friend in Struga, had recommended a historical religious spot called Agia Theodora. We went north of Valira to see this church area. There was a young peasant woman from a deeply religious family in the Byzantine period who wanted to dedicate her life to being a monk. Why a monk rather than a nun, I’m uncertain. She lived as a man, became a monk, and was involved in community outreach work. After being falsely accused of impregnating an unwed girl, she was condemned and put to death. She never disclosed she was a woman, which would have instantly exonerated her. Instead, she turned to God and prayed for her body to become a church, her blood to become a river, and her hair to become trees.
After her execution and martyrdom, a small church was built in her honour. A spring bubbled up, forming a river. 17 trees, representing her 17 years of life, grew on the roof of the church with no evidence of roots binding them to the ground. The church was beautiful and it’s amazing to think this approximately 1000-year-old church is still being cared for and visited by the devout to this day. We bought a book about the life and story of St. Theodora and enjoyed some time sitting by the river, basking in the peace and serenity of the area after praying inside her church and lighting candles to pray for our loved ones.
An era we haven’t considered as much in Greek history is the medieval Byzantine period. Our favourite non-ancient Greek historical site was Mystras, which is located next to Sparti (Ancient Sparta) to the southeast of Valira. These ruins were stunningly gorgeous and so different from those we had seen elsewhere in Greece so far. They were also still very much intact in many areas, likely given how much newer (comparatively speaking!) they are.
Mystras was founded in the mid-13th century, the capital of this region, and was built on the side of a mountain, so it was pretty tough going up in some areas. We all marvelled at what it would have been like to live in a settlement on the side of a mountain like this! It’s impressive the structures and palace they were able to build here. I can’t imagine it was an easy engineering feat. But they did their work well for it to be holding up more than 700 years later!
We didn’t have a lot of time here, as we got here in the evening, avoiding the intense heat of the day. We stayed until the last possible moment when they were closing up to maximize our time. Honestly, we are glad we went for a shorter period later in the day, as we could never have gotten up those hills in the morning or afternoon heat of the day! But we still managed to fit in a LOT of learning and exploring in our time here. This was one of our favourite sites in all of Greece, even more so than many of the Ancient Greek sites. We are so grateful a friend recommended this site to us.
The Byzantine era ended in the mid-15th century in this region of Greece, falling to the Ottoman Empire. Mystras still flourished and remained inhabited during the Ottoman occupation, and the brief period of Venetian occupation in the late 18th century before it reverted to Ottoman control. An uprising later in the 18th century began its demise, while the city was destroyed in the early to mid 19th century during the Greek War of Independence. The inhabitants slowly began moving away to newly built towns, including Sparti. The remains of Mystras are now a UNESCO heritage site only.
Another location to the southwest of Valira that we explored was Methoni, a Byzantine medieval fortification. There was a large site where the castle ruins were located, which you entered via a bridge over a dry moat. Having explored several castle ruins, including some closer to Valira, we thought we would spend maybe an hour exploring here. We vastly underestimated how long it would take us to explore this area! Thankfully we decided to stop for a snack at a gorgeous beachfront hotel restaurant next to the castle before going into the ruins, so we were able to take our time exploring and have a later lunch.
We went in and were unaware of how vast this area was. It didn’t take long until we realized, however. We walked all over, exploring old ruins, going down twisty stairs and through tunnels/halls, into a church area, into what appeared to be artillery storage buildings, and walking around the walls. The west side of the fortress was insanely windy, while the east side (where we started) was nice and calm. It was such a difference, and it was astounding! We could all lean forward into the wind, but the wind would hold us up so we couldn’t fall forward. Jon in particular had a lot of fun playing and experimenting with this!
At the south end, there was a drawbridge that led out to a bridge across the water to another smaller building that appeared to be a former prison. We were gratified to read a plaque that confirmed it was, indeed, a former prison. It was used for a variety of other reasons, including for inhabitants to shelter when needed. We walked around this area thinking to ourselves how very impossible it would have been to escape from this little prison area. Even on a beautiful, sunny day, this area was full of water that came crashing into the area. It would be suicidal to try and jump into the rocky water here and try to swim for freedom!
We thoroughly enjoyed exploring this area and learning about this place and its history. It seems that it was in use for so many periods of history including Turkish (Ottoman) occupation and Venetian occupation. We hadn’t realized that Greece was under Turkish occupation for 400 years until this trip. Or, the amount of Venetian influence Greece experienced for a portion of that Ottoman Empire time. When we have thought of Greece, we have always been more drawn to considering its more ancient history.
We enjoyed learning so much about this era. We listened to an audiobook together as a family earlier in our trip, The Modern Scholar: The Medieval World 1: Kingdoms, Empires, and War. This gave us a lot of information about various areas of Medieval Europe, including the splitting of the Roman Empire into the West and the East. The eastern one was later referred to as the Byzantine Empire (though it was never referred to as such until after its demise, which we hadn’t realized!). This is making us want to delve a little further into this as a family to learn more about the Byzantine Empire itself. We do have another non-fiction audiobook that will delve further into this, we just didn’t quite get around to listening to it yet. But after these explorations, you better believe we are all interested in learning more about this era of history!