Palace,
August 1994
Palace
2001.
Palace 1978 to help explain reconstruction below.
Palace, October 2014
So
I took my grandchildren to see Mistra last October. Readers of this
blog know that Mistra is my passion and the focus of my scholarship.
No one can be blamed for the rain: it had already rained in Nauplion
for a week, and it continued raining in Monemvasia.
But
once again the palace was behind barricades. It has been closed to
visitors for more than 20 years. A whole generation of scholars has
written about Mistra without ever being inside its single most
important secular building. A whole generation of tourists has been
turned away from the most comprehensible structure on the site. It
is all well and good to publicize that Mistra is a World Heritage
Site (and that produced a great deal of funding), but despite the
interminable restoration, stabilization, and reconstruction projects,
there is less to see than when I was a regular visitor in the late
70s.
A
great many houses are being rebuilt, but they were well along in the
rebuilding process according to The Monuments of Mystras,
edited and mostly written by Stephanos Sinos, published in 2009, and
very expensive and very heavy. These house are still not completed
and open to visitors. I will not get into the disappearance of the rest room from the Pantanassa, or the majority of the walkways that are extremely dangerous to those of us who are no longer young.
So
this entry
is an inquiry: What is
going on at Mistra? I hope readers will tell me what they know,
either in the Comment section below, or privately at
nauplion@gmail.com.
The on-going Greek financial crisis is almost certainly responsible for these delays. I visited M. in 2009 and the palace looked much as it does in your photo of 2014. Thanks for your valuable blog.
ReplyDeleteThe palace of Mistra was open to visitors in the early 2000's, certainly in 2001-2002 for the big exhibition titled Ώρες Βυζαντίου. I was fortunate enough to pay a visit there. I only hope things improve in the future.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your blog, Diana, and wish you good health.
Mimis Amimitos
I was there last week and the palace was closed to the visitors.
ReplyDelete