Description of the Lower Town

The "Single Entrance"

The walk from Yephira to Monemvasia takes fifteen to twenty minutes, via a causeway that connects Yephira to the rock at its closest point to the mainland. If we turn around just across the causeway, we can see the historical stages leading to the settlement of Monemvasia.

In the middle of the bay to the right (northwest), we see a small hill where once stood the city and acropolis of Epidauros Limera. The following map still indicates this location as "Vieille Malvasie" (Old Monemvasia).

Further to the north there are several houses located directly on the shore. This is the little village of Palaea Monemvasia (Old Monemvasia); on the map it is called St. Nicoló. On the right hand side of Palaea Monemvasia there is a peninsula, on which stands a tower. Palaea Monemvasia and this peninsula served as intermediate stops for the people of Epidauros Limera as they fled before the Slavs and Avars. Eventually they settled the rock of Monemvasia itself.

Formerly there stood a stone bridge at the causeway. It was 163 meters long and had thirteen arches. Before this was built, there was only a small isthmus of sand that connected the rock with the mainland. Isthmus, bridge or causeway provided the only access to the rock and thus made it easily defensible. This situation gave the town its name "Single entrance" or "mone embasis", out of which the modern word "Monemvasia" developed.

We can still see the remains of the defensive fortifications of this single entrance at the end of the causeway on the rock's shore. The defensive system once had a large central portal. All that now remains is a wall built of rubble and provided with loopholes. At the end of the nineteenth century most of the fortification was destroyed during the construction of the road that now leads up to the city wall. The destruction caused by the road building is still evident today.

The broken cistern openings and the breached house foundations indicate that buildings and churches occupied the entire slope of the southern side of the rock, and not just the plateau and the walled faubourg. The observant pedestrian can thus see that the woodcuts and engravings from the end of the seventeenth century accurately represented this part of the rock of Monemvasia.

Harbor Chart from the Late Seventeenth Century