Tiryns, a hill fort with occupation ranging…
1341 BCE to 1198 BCE
Tiryns, a hill fort with occupation ranging back seven thousand years, from the beginning of the Bronze Age, reaches its height between 1400 and 1200 BCE.
Its most notable features are its palace, its cyclopean tunnels, and especially its walls, which give the city its Homeric epithet of "mighty walled Tiryns.”
In ancient times, the city is linked to the myths surrounding Heracles, with some sources citing it as his birthplace.
The famous megaron of the palace of Tiryns has a large reception hall, the main room of which has a throne placed against the right wall and a central hearth bordered by four Minoan-style wooden columns that serve as supports for the roof.
The people of Tiryns greatly strengthen the city's fortifications around 1300, extending the works to include the lower part of the hill to the north, but the site goes into decline at the end of the Mycenaean period.
The surviving ruins of the Mycenaean citadel are dated to the end of the third period.
The disaster that strikes the Mycenaean centers at the end of the Bronze Age affects Tiryns, but it is certain that the area of the palace is inhabited continuously until the middle of the eighth century BCE (a little later a temple of Hera will be built in the ruins of the palace).