Mystras

Mystras, also known as Mistras, is a fortified town and former municipality in Laconia, in the Peloponnese region of Greece, situated in the Taygetus mountain range above ancient Sparta. It served as the capital of the Byzantine Despotate of the Morea in the 14th and 15th centuries, drawing artists, architects and intellectuals such as Gemistos Plethon during the Palaiologan Renaissance, and the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, was despot of Mystras before ascending the throne in Constantinople. The town remained inhabited through the Ottoman period, when foreign travelers sometimes mistook it for ancient Sparta, but was abandoned in the 1830s after the new town of Sparta was built about eight kilometers to the east. As an exceptionally well preserved example of a Byzantine city, Mystras was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1989.