Fatehpur Sikri is an ancient fortified city 40km west of Agra built in the 16th century. For a short time it was the capital of the Mughal empire but was abandoned because of lack of water.
It it contains three ‘palaces’, one for each of the three wives of the Emperor Akbar.
Today we visited Delphi. Unusually for us we managed to get off early to catch the local bus and be the first at the gates when they opened at 8am and for a short period we pretty much had the whole site to ourselves, which was wonderful. Definitely recommend the early start as it gets hot very quickly and the coach tours arrive. The site is absolutely amazing and the position and views are spectacular.
The on-site museum has a fantastic amount of material recovered from the site.
The Charioteer was covered and hidden as a result of an earthquake and so didn’t get looted but was found pretty much intact during the excavations.
What an amazing place. It’s 3500 years old built on a massive hill with walls several metres thick. Here’s the Lion Gate entrance.
The excavations discovered these ‘beehive’ tombs with shafts going into the ground and a conical roof. This one is the tomb of Clymenestra surrounded by all sorts of beautiful artefacts. She murdered her husband Agamemnon then she and her lover were then killed by her two children.
Evidently the potters wheel was introduced in the 3rd millennium changing the nature of pottery and some of the pieces in the museum are wonderful.
(As an aside the owners of campsite where we’re now staying at Delphi who also produce olive oil have very old olive trees which they say are 3,000 years old!!!! )
As we travel around I continually realise how little I know about so many things. We’ve just spent a day in Mystras an amazing ruined Byzantine city with a castle perched on top of a hill. Know about the Byzantine empire? Well I didn’t.
A very quick history lesson – whilst the western Roman Empire came to an end in AD476 when the last emperor of Rome was executed, the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) continued until AD1204. It started when the Roman emperor Constantine I founded Constantinople (Istanbul) in AD330. The Byzantines made Mystras into their second city and this was maintained into the 15th century even though the knights of the Fourth Crusade and other Franks (any foreigner from NW Europe) had sacked Constantinople and taken over part of the Peloponnese.
The churches in Mystras and throughout this area of the Peloponnese have a very distinctive style and architecture, and internally and are filled with amazing frescos.
We stayed in a nearby campsite called Castle View and walked to the old Mystra site. There are two entrances and I recommend entering at the top ‘Fortress’ entrance as then you walk slowly down. If you entered at the Main entrance you’d have to walk up and would probably run out of legs before getting to the castle. It is a fantastic site and we spent the whole day there wandering around looking at the castle, houses, churches etc
(if you click on a photo in the gallery it will open in its own page)
I had never been to Pompeii and it was a revelation. I had no idea of the size and that it was a city. It had an amphitheatre which held 20,000 people and a large theatre for plays which held 5,000. It is huge and amazing in terms of the preservation and how you can visualise the lives of the people living there. I’ve now started to read Mary Beard’s ‘Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town’ which is very readable, and they’re just like us. Here are some photos.
On Monday in Belgium we went past Waterloo but I realised that my military history isn’t too good. Would anyone like to inform us about the battle of Waterloo?