Palace of Nestor

Excavated from 1939 by Carl Blegen, the palace on the hill of Epano Englianos is the most completely preserved Mycenaean palace known, its ground plan legible room by room because fire baked the mud-brick and sealed everything beneath it. The throne room retains the circular hearth, the bases of four columns and the mark of the throne against the wall; a side chamber holds a fixed terracotta bathtub, and storerooms still contained hundreds of stacked drinking cups. Above all, the first day of excavation produced clay tablets in Linear B, a script fired accidentally by the same destruction; these Pylos tablets, with those from Knossos, allowed Michael Ventris to decipher the script in 1952 and prove that Mycenaean Greeks spoke Greek. A modern roof now shelters the whole site on raised walkways.

What you actually see

• The throne room - hearth, column bases and the throne's position.
• The bathroom - a terracotta tub still fixed in its plaster surround.
• The storerooms - magazines that held oil jars and stacked cups.
• The archive room - where the Linear B tablets were found in 1939.

When to go

Year-round; the site is fully roofed, which makes it comfortable even in midsummer, unusual for a Greek excavation. Combine it with the Chora museum, which holds the finds.

Honest expectations

Everything is seen from elevated walkways, so you cannot walk on the palace floors, and the walls stand only knee to waist high. The tablets themselves are in the Chora museum and in Athens. The site is compact; an hour covers it.

Nearby

Chora's archaeological museum is five minutes away; Pylos, Gialova and Voidokilia are south.