Mytilene - Castle, Part II

After the Madrassa, we walked around the castle grounds and up on the castle walls some.

This was the entrance to the cistern, where all the water was kept

 The next pictures are of the cisterns:

And now the views from the walls:

  As you can see, the castle was quite sprawling. Did anyone else ever play that old PC game Stronghold Legends? In some respects, Mytilene's castle reminded me a little of that game. The walls are very far-flung and there is lots of space inside for people to live and store weapons. I guess you really can learn a lot from the right kinds of computer games.

Anyway, the next pictures are from the walk back down the way we came up. This time the guide told us the story of the grove of trees we walked through: they were planted by Greek soldiers in 1912, when Lesvos became independent from the Ottoman Empire.

Just for some context (that completely blows my mind), Theodosius died in 395 AD and left the Roman Empire to his two sons, one to rule in the west (Rome) and one to rule in the east (Byzantium/Constantinople) and it was never unified again (except when the Byzantine emperors conquered parts of Italy, much later). Then, the Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople, the last strong Byzantine city, in 1453. Then the Ottomans were driven from Lesvos in 1912, two years before WWI. In short only two empires separate WWI from the Roman Empire. (I think Lesvos was overrun by other groups and pirates, etc., so they weren't only under those two empires, but to the best of my understanding, those two were the biggest powers in Greece until WWI.) To me, this is mind-blowing. The Ottomans defeated the direct heir of the Roman Empire, and then they were defeated in a war that had airplanes. 

Anyway, below are some more pictures from Mytilene:

The guide said these were old pieces of pottery that were used for decoration in modern houses

And this is the house I call Red Lobster. It's where they found the mosaic of that crab-haired guy in the museum.

All for now - more to follow!