On the western coast of the Peloponnese, where the gulf of Kyparissia opens its blue arms to the Ionian Sea, a Frankish fortress crowns the steep hill that rises behind the town of the same name. Known locally as the Castle of Arcadia or, more poetically, the Castle of the Giants, this medieval stronghold has watched the Messenian coastline through some twenty-five centuries of Greek history. Today it offers travellers a romantic ruin, a sweeping panorama of the Ionian, and arguably one of the most extraordinary sunsets to be witnessed anywhere in southern Greece.
Kyparissia itself is a small port town of roughly five thousand residents, scattered in two distinct sections: a modern lower town wrapped around the harbour and a steeply inclined upper town, the Ano Poli, where cobblestone alleys, neoclassical façades, and bougainvillea-draped courtyards climb the hillside toward the castle gates. The position has commanded the western Peloponnese for so long that the place enters recorded history alongside the Greek bronze age: Homer mentions Kyparissia in the Iliad among the eleven cities that contributed ships to King Nestor's contingent in the Trojan War.
