Qualla: Castle of Mytilene

Castle of Mytilene: Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geraki, CC BY-SA 4.0. Stand on the right hilltop in Mytilene and you are standing on roughly six layers of history at once. A Byzantine fortress, perhaps begun under Justinian I in the 6th century, sits on top of an even older Greek acropolis where Demeter, Kore, and Cybele may have shared a sanctuary. A Genoese castle, the work of Francesco I Gattilusio in 1373, sits on top of the Byzantine. Ottoman walls built by Bekir Pasha in 1643 sit on top of the Genoese. Sixty acres of stone in total, making this one of the largest castles in the entire Mediterranean. When the masons of 1677 needed material to extend the lower north walls, they walked down the hill and quarried the Ancient Theatre of Mytilene for it. The castle is, in a literal sense, made of the city it was built to guard.

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Image: Geraki | CC BY-SA 4.0

Castle of Mytilene: A City Cut by a Channel

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geraki, CC BY-SA 4.0. In Homer's time, Mytilene was not one place but two. A channel 700 meters long and 30 meters wide separated the main city from a small island, and triremes 34 meters long passed through it under marble bridges that arched across the curve. The Greek word euripus referred to this ...

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Image: Geraki | CC BY-SA 4.0

Castle of Mytilene: Pompey's Friend, the Romans' Grudge

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geraki, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lesbos chose the wrong side in the Mithridatic Wars and paid for it. In 88 BC, after the island sided with Mithridates against Rome, the Romans destroyed Mytilene and absorbed what may have been a Temple of Apollo into the foundations of whatever came next. Pompey, a few decades ...

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Image: Geraki | CC BY-SA 4.0

Castle of Mytilene: The Genoese Lord and His Tower

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Katsiaryna Naliuka, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1373, the island came into Genoese hands when Francesco I Gattilusio, a Genoese adventurer who had married into the Byzantine imperial family, became its lord. He rebuilt the upper castle as a private residence and stamped it with the symbols of his power. A square stone tower...

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Image: Katsiaryna Naliuka | CC BY-SA 3.0

Castle of Mytilene: Mosques, Madrasas, and a Moat

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geraki, CC BY-SA 4.0. Under the Ottomans, Mytilene castle stopped being a single building and became a small walled city. Bekir Pasha modernized the defenses in 1643 to 1644, perhaps preparing for the Cretan War, perhaps repairing earthquake damage. He built a fresh wall in front of the medieval one a...

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Image: Geraki | CC BY-SA 4.0

Castle of Mytilene: After 1912, the Castle as Quarry

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Olaf Tausch, CC BY-SA 3.0. Greece took Lesbos from the Ottoman Empire on November 8, 1912, during the First Balkan War. Independence came at a cost most stones could not survive. After 1912, the castle was used as a source of building material to construct refugee housing for Greeks displaced from Asia Min...

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Image: Olaf Tausch | CC BY-SA 3.0