Top 10 Castles in Greece
Greece has more documented castle and fortress sites than any other country in Europe in proportion to its area, a consequence of its position as the Mediterranean's most contested ground. Byzantine fortifications, Crusader and Frankish castles from after the Fourth Crusade of 1204, Venetian harbour fortifications maintained for five centuries of maritime empire, and Ottoman administrative fortresses all layer the landscape. These ten represent the range. Find them on the map.
1. Palace of the Grand Master, Rhodes
The Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John on Rhodes is one of the most impressive medieval fortifications in the eastern Mediterranean. The city of Rhodes, founded after the Knights' expulsion from Jerusalem in 1291, was designed as a military headquarters: the walled city with the palace at its northern end, the Street of the Knights (where each national section of the Order had its inn), and the harbour fortifications form one of the most complete medieval urban environments anywhere. UNESCO listed the medieval city in 1988.
2. Methoni Castle, Messinia
Methoni, on the southwestern tip of the Peloponnese, was Venice's most important Aegean staging post. The long peninsula castle, connected to the sea fort (Bourtzi) by a causeway, was maintained by Venice from 1206 to 1500 as the essential provisioning point for all Venetian Levantine trade. The scale and completeness of the surviving Venetian walls — with Ottoman additions after 1500 — is exceptional.
3. Monemvasia, Laconia
Monemvasia — the name means "single entrance" — is a rock the size of a small town attached to the Peloponnese coast by a single causeway, fortified by Byzantines, Franks, and Venetians from the 6th century. The lower town, with its Byzantine and Venetian buildings, is inhabited; the upper town, reached by a steep path, contains the ruins of the medieval citadel and the Church of Hagia Sophia. The setting — sheer cliffs above the sea — makes it the most dramatically sited castle settlement in Greece.
4. Acrocorinth, Corinth
Acrocorinth — the acropolis of ancient Corinth — has been continuously fortified since the Archaic period. The Byzantine walls, supplemented by Frankish, Venetian, and Ottoman additions, enclose a plateau of considerable size above the Corinthian plain. The three gates in sequence — Turkish, Frankish, and Byzantine — each from different periods of the castle's history, are visible in one approach.
5. Mystras, Laconia
Mystras, the Byzantine despotate capital in the Taygetos mountains above the Spartan plain, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most important late Byzantine archaeological sites in the world. The castle above the ruins of the medieval city dates from the 13th century Frankish period; the city itself — churches, palaces, and urban fabric — is Byzantine, from the period when the Despot of Morea (a Byzantine semiautonomous principality) made it a centre of late Byzantine culture. Plethon's philosophical school here influenced the Italian Renaissance.
6. Palamidi Fortress, Nafplio
Palamidi, above the first capital of modern Greece at Nafplio, is a Venetian fortress built in an extraordinarily short time — 1711-14 — on a promontory 216 metres above the sea. The fortress's eight independent bastions, each capable of independent defence if the others fell, and the 999 steps from the city below (now partially supplemented by a road) make it one of the most visited sites in the Peloponnese.
7. Bodrum Castle (Halicarnassus), Turkey/Greece context
Though now in Turkey, the Castle of Saint Peter at Bodrum was built and maintained by the Knights of Saint John from Rhodes — the same order that held Rhodes — after 1402. Its construction stripped stone from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders. The cultural and institutional connection to the Greek Aegean tradition is direct.
8. Antimacheia Castle, Kos
Antimacheia, on the island of Kos, is a well-preserved Hospitaller castle of the 14th-15th century. The castle's inner enclosure, outer wall, and gate complexes retain considerable fabric; the views over Kos and toward the Turkish coast illustrate the surveillance function of the Hospitaller island fortress system.
9. Chlemoutsi (Clermont) Castle, Elis
Chlemoutsi, in the northwestern Peloponnese, is the best-preserved Frankish castle in Greece. Built from 1220 for Geoffrey I of Villehardouin, Prince of Achaea, its distinctive hexagonal plan with a polygonal inner enclosure and larger outer bailey is entirely consistent with the Crusader castle architecture of the period but appears nowhere else in Greece.
10. Bourtzi, Nafplio Harbour
Bourtzi is a small island fortress in Nafplio harbour built by Venice in the early 15th century to control the harbour entrance. The castle is accessible by boat from Nafplio in summer; its combination of picturesque island position, Venetian architecture, and harbour-control function makes it one of the most photographed sights in the Peloponnese.
Explore on the map
Greece's castle landscape — from the northern mainland through Attica, the Peloponnese, and the Aegean islands to the Dodecanese — is fully represented on the interactive map.