Condition: Good. BOX packed with padding. Pages: not written on, clean, bright, odor free. Dust jacket: clean, bright, bumping and rubbing to edges, no tears, SEE PHOTOS, message to request Dust jacket condition details. Ships from California. Ships same or next day (weekdays and Saturdays)! ABOUT: Mistra 

BYZANTINE CAPITAL OF THE PELOPONNESE 

STEVEN RUNCIMAN MISTRA, the Byzantine capital of the Morea, or Peloponnese, whose ruins climb a foothill of the Taygetus mountains, was founded in the thirteenth century after the Frankish conquest of the peninsula. Sparta, a few miles away in the rich valley of the Eurotas, had been a famous city since the days of Helen of Troy and became the favorite residence of the Frankish princes. To protect it from the untamed mountain tribes, William II of Villehardouin, Prince of Achaea, built in 1249 a great castle on the summit of the hill which was later to be known as Mistra. Ten years later at a battle in northern Greece he was defeated and captured by the Byzantine Emperor; and the terms for his release included the cession of Mistra to the Byzantine Greeks. Soon afterwards Mistra became the capital of the growing Greek province of the Peloponnese. A city developed, to which the people of Sparta moved for greater protection during the continual warfare between the Franks and the Greeks. Princes of the Imperial family, with the title of Despot, were sent to govern the province. Under their rule Mistra became a notable center of learning and the arts and a focal point for the cultural development of Europe as a whole. The Greek reconquest of the Peloponnese was only completed on the eve of the extinction of Byzantium by the Ottoman Turks and Mistra fell in 146o. After 146o its history was one of slow decline, till it was half-destroyed by Albanian irregulars in the late eighteenth century and finally destroyed by Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt during the Greek War of Independence.