Mystras

Mystras is a fortified settlement, located on a hill west of Sparta at the foot of Mt. Taygetos. Crusader remnants of the fourth crusade built a castle in 1249 to control the region. A settlement grew around the castles after the Franks surrendered it to the Byzantines in 1262. It flourished as a civic and cultural center in the Late Byzantine Era, when the empire was ruled by the last Byzantine dynasty, the Palaiologoi (1261–1453) and later became the capital of the Despotate of Morea in the 14th century.