-1 101 Z Massive 'cyclopean' walls and formidable gates still stand around the citadel at Mycenae and within it one may still climb the stone stairs to the palace or descend the dark passage to the underground cistern, following in the legendary footsteps of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra and other Homeric figures.
# citadel zoom - opening PW
5 101 X The massive defensive wall around Mycenae was begun in the 14th century BC and extended in the 13th. It was constructed without mortar, of huge flat-faced irregular blocks of stone with smaller stones filling the gaps. The wall was broken by small postern gates with a walled approach making them easily defensible.
#Fortification
6 102 B The many-roomed palace occupied the highest point on the citadel. Its main feature was a megaron, a large open hall with a great central hearth, approached through an antechamber. Around the walls ran a frieze, of which fragments remain, depicting warfare, and the floor was covered with painted stucco.
# Palace
9 101 A Part of the east wing of the palace, this complex of rooms contained many fragments of unworked ivory, along with other valuable materials including gold and precious stones. Craftsmen making these into jewellery, furniture inlays and other prized objects would have worked under the aegis of the royal family.
# Workshop
11 102 D The main access to Mycenaean citadels was usually through a massive gateway. Often its uprights and lintel were stones even more massive than those of the walls. In the triangular pediment above the lintel of Mycenae's gateway stand two stone lions facing a central pillar, their paws raised on altars.
# Lion Gate
24 101 X A complex of rooms formed a single shrine. One room contained numerous male and female figurines, representing participants in a religious ceremony. Others were decorated with friezes depicting religious processions, and goddesses associated with an altar. It is thought that offerings were placed inside while sacrifices were made and libations poured outside the shrine.
# Sacred area
30 101 X Within the citadel were houses of nobles and wealthy merchants, substantial structures of mudbrick and rubble masonry. Their walls were decorated with frescoes, those in one house depicting bull-grappling and acrobatics reminiscent of Minoan Crete. Many frescoes were burnt, eloquent testimony of the citadel's destruction by fire in the 12th century.
#Houses
31 0 3 16
# IW Shaft graves
132 101 X Mycenae was the centre of a network of roads along which carts and chariots could be driven: their wheel ruts are still visible. Probably well surfaced, the roads ran over bridges where necessary: these were built of the cyclopean (gigantic) blocks familiar from Mycenaean sites, with an arched culvert through which the river could flow.
# The ROAD
148 101 X The walls of Mycenae were extended in the 13th century BC, protecting the concealed entrance to a subterranean vaulted passage leading beneath the walls to an underground cistern. This ensured that the citadel had access to water during a siege, and is an indication of increasingly troubled times.
# Drain and Cistern
168 101 X A building by the Lion Gate may have been a guard house but is known as the 'granary' from the carbonized remains of cereals and vetch stored in large jars (pithoi) in its basement. It also had two upper storeys.
