Menelaion

The Menelaion sits on a low hill five kilometres east of Sparta, across the Eurotas river, looking back across the valley to the Taygetos. The visible monument is the rectangular stone base of an Archaic-period altar dedicated to the worship of Menelaus and Helen as hero-figures. Underneath, in successive seasons of excavation since 1909, archaeologists have found three Mycenaean buildings dated to the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC — a complex large and elaborate enough to plausibly be a Bronze Age palace.

There is little signage on site and access is by a rough dirt road; a normal car will manage it in dry weather. The site is free, almost always empty, and worth the visit mainly for the view back across the valley to Sparta with the Taygetos snowcaps behind. An hour, including the walk up from the parking spot.

things to do sight
A story
The site has been continuously identified as the heroon — the hero-shrine — of Menelaus and Helen since at least the Archaic period. Excavations have shown Mycenaean palace architecture underneath the later Greek altar, raising the possibility that this really was the Bronze Age palace from which Paris carried Helen off to Troy. Or one of them. Or none of them.