Andravída

Andravida stands in the fertile plain of Elis, inland from the Ionian coast. In the Middle Ages it was the residence of the princes of Achaea, close to their port at Glarentza yet far enough from the sea to be sheltered from raids. The surrounding plain supplied the princely court and its horses, and the unfortified town became the heart of Frankish government in the Morea.

According to the Chronicle of the Morea, local Greek lords paid homage to the crusader William of Champlitte here in 1205. Andravida later acquired a Latin bishop and a princely palace. The nobility of the principality often assembled in the Dominican church of Saint Sophia, the largest of its churches. The Despotate of the Morea took the town in the late 1420s, and the Ottomans conquered it in 1460.