ABSTRACT
The city of Monemvasia developed on a limestone rock situated on the peninsula of Lakonike on the eastern coast of the Peloponnese. The rock juts out from the coast at a distance of about twenty nautical miles north of Cape Maleas (see Map 1.1 in Chapter 1). It has a length of 1.5 km and its width reaches 600 metres. The perpendicular rocks rise over a perimetrical strip of land at sea level, which is sloping or sometimes stepped, with a width that varies, reaching 200 metres at most (Plate 12.1). High above the perpendicular rocks, a relatively even, inclined plateau is formed at an altitude which does not exceed 200 metres.1 (Figure 12.1).
