GREECE PELOPONNESE MESSINIA ENGLIANOS PALACE

Above and below: Looking from Ano Englianos to the Bay of Navarino and the lagoon.

Nestor, the wise king of Pylos, was the son of Neleus in Greek mythology. He took part in the fight between the Lapiths and Centaurs, in the Kalydonian Hunt, and joined the Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece. Homer describes him in the Iliad as the bright and eloquent advisor of the Greeks during the siege of Troy, who was one of the few who returned home safely after the Trojan War. Telemachos visited him there to enquire his father's fate.

The dispute about the location of Nestor's palace reaches as far back as the first century BC, when the geographer Strabo assumed it to be at Kakovatos, Triphylia. Dörpfeld, Marinatos and others later supported this opinion. Most scholars, however, placed Nestor's palace somewhere near the Bay of Navarino. This was also the conviction of the American archaeologist Carl Blegen, who selected for his first dig in 1939 a prominent hilltop at Ano Englianos, 17 km north of modern Pylos, which seemed to him eminently suitable as the site of a royal palace. Already in the very first trench Blegen unearthed Mycenaean pottery as well as Linear B tablets, and extensive structures began to appear.

Still, the role of the architectural remains at the different sites remains controversial. A suggested compromise is the following theory:

• Neleus rules over Triphylia in Kakovatos towards the end of the 14th century BC; Nestor's youth.
• Nestor extends his empire to Messinia in the first half of the 13th century BC and erects the palace at Ano Englianos.
• Ancient Koryphasio, originally Nestor's port, and according to ancient tradition his palace, becomes the fort to which Nestor and two further generations of Neleids retreat.

Plan of Nestor's palace

Soon after Carl Blegen had begun to dig at Ano Englianos in 1939, World War II intervened. It was not until 1952 that Blegen was able to return with a team from the University of Cincinnati and organize a thorough campaign of excavation — he was to stay for a dozen years.

Unlike Mycenae or Tiryns, the site at Ano Englianos was never fortified. It consists of 105 ground floor apartments, distributed over four main buildings (central building, SW building, NE building, wine magazine).

Although Nestor's palace is regarded as the best preserved of the Mycenaean palaces, it is not easy to imagine the original appearance of the buildings from the remains. In the 1966 publication of the excavation results, however, two reconstruction drawings by Piet de Jong (below) were included. Countlessly reproduced, they have decisively shaped our conception of Mycenaean palaces.

Above left: Sherds sherds from the excavations, exhibited in the museum of Chora. - Above right and below: Before entering the royal quarters in the central building, the visitor arrived at a number of courtyards and anterooms.