The castle is constructed upon a headland, the highest point of which is 114 metres above sea level. Occupying a site of 14.4 hectares, the kastro is one of the largest fortresses in...
Geometric and Archaic Periods
The date of the Pelasgians’ arrival on Lemnos is uncertain but it certainly took place after the end of the second millennium BC. The Pelasgians were inhabitants of Attic, who were forced by the Athen...
Classical Period
In the year 511 BC, as we learn also from the ancient historian Herodotus (5, 26.1, 5, 27.1), the army of the Persian king Darius, under general Otanes, captured Lemnos, which was still inhabited by t...
Hellenistic and Roman Periods
With the end of the Peloponnesian War in 401 BC, the island passed to the authority of Sparta and the Athenians left, to return in 387 BC, when they regained power. In the ensuing years, Lemnos was at...
The Byzantine Empire until the 12th Century
After the division of the Roman Empire in AD 395, Lemnos passed to the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, continuing to enjoy a period of peace and stability. It had a shipyard in which the ships of th...
First Period of Venetian Rule
After the dividing up of the lands of the Byzantine Empire by the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade and the ceding of the Aegean islands to the Venetians, Venice entrusted the rule of Lemnos to the Vene...
Byzantine Empire 13th – 15th century (1279-1453)
After the dissolution of the Grand Duchy of Lemnos in 1279, by the Latin admiral of Byzantium Lykarios, Lemnos remained under the jurisdiction of the Palaiologan emperors until the end of the Byzantin...
Period of Alternating Rule 1453-1479: Gattilusi – Venetians – Ottomans
From the breakup of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 and until 1479, when the long Ottoman domination of Lemnos commenced, rule of the island alternated between the Gattilusi 1453-1456, the Venetians 1457...
Third Period of Venetian Rule
In 1463, when war broke out between the Turks and the Venetians, someone by the name of Comino captured the castle of Myrina, after successive attacks, and consolidated his authority (in the...
Second Period of Ottoman Rule
With the end of the First Veneto-Turkish war (1479) and of Venetian rule on Lemnos, the castle became the centre of military command and defence during the long period of Ottoman rule on the island, w...
Post-1912
Lemnos was liberated from the Turkish yoke in 1912 after 456 years of Ottoman domination. On 8 October, Greek military forces captured the island and on the morrow they unfurled the Greek flag on the ...
German Occupation
On 25 April 1941, in the thick of the Second World War, the Germans captured Lemnos. Myrina and the castle were taken at 11 a.m. The German war correspondent who accompanied the force, Ernst Lothar Re...
