What common feature does England, Italy, North and South America have – and the Peloponnese for that matter?
They have mountain ranges more or less running north-south forming a spine: the Pennines, Apennines, Rockies, Andes and the Taygetus. Yesterday we drove across the Taygetus mountain range, sixty-two miles long and rising to 2,400 metres. Our destination was Mystras, the Byzantine capital of the eastern Roman Empire after the fall of Constantinople. The western Roman Empire had ended about a thousand years earlier with the fall of Rome.
There is plenty to see but this carved marble relief of a double-headed eagle encapsulates the last days of the Roman, actually Greek, Empire.
It marks the spot where Constantine XI, the last Roman Emperor, was crowned in 1449. He only ruled for four years. He was killed unsuccessfully defending Constantinople against a vastly numerically superior Ottoman army. It marked the end of the Byzantine Empire, tracing its origin to Constantine the Great’s foundation of Constantinople as the Roman Empire’s new capital in 330. A Constantine from Alpha to Omega, an appropriate expression as Constantine’s empire was Grecian – territory captured by Alexander the Great in the third century BC.
Greece’s long and rather complicated history is becoming clearer as we visit these sites with an expert and highly entertaining English expert.