Micenas (Mykines)

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About Micenas (Mykines)

Micenas gave its name to an entire civilization. Between 1600 and 1100 BCE, the citadel on a hilltop between two mounds controlled the plain of the Argólida, and from there, according to Homer, Agamemnon's ships set out for Troy. Heinrich Schliemann excavated here in 1876 looking for the king's tomb and found, in the Circle of Tombs A, the gold masks that are now in the Museu Arqueológico Nacional de Atenas, including the one he called the Mask of Agamemnon, three centuries older than the Trojan War. The site has been a World Heritage Site since 1999, together with Tirinto.

The visit begins at the Porta dos Leões, from about 1250 BCE, with two lionesses carved into a triangular stone above the lintel — the oldest monumental sculpture in Europe. Around it are the cyclopean walls, built of blocks so large that later Greeks thought only the Cyclopes could have raised them. Inside, the path climbs past the Circle of Tombs A up to the palace at the top, and descends to the underground cistern, a dark stairway that drops 18 meters into the rock.

Outside the walls, 500 meters away, is the Tesouro de Atreu, a beehive-shaped tomb 13 meters high, with an entrance passage and a lintel of 120 tons; the name is old and mistaken, because it was never a treasury but a royal tomb from the 13th century BCE. The site's museum, modern and small, displays pottery, figurines, jewelry and a replica of the gold mask, and helps make sense of what you see up on the hill.