Kyparissía

Kyparissia stands on the western coast of Messenia, below a castle built on the site of its ancient acropolis. Homer mentioned the town in the Iliad, and Pausanias later described its temples and a spring sacred to Dionysus. In the Middle Ages the town was known as Arkadia and became the centre of a barony of the Frankish Principality of Achaea. The barony passed to the Byzantine Despotate of the Morea in 1432, and the Ottomans took the town in 1460. Apart from a period of Venetian rule, it remained Ottoman until the Greek War of Independence. Ibrahim Pasha's forces destroyed Arkadia in 1825. When it was rebuilt, the town resumed the ancient name of Kyparissia.