The Mycenaean citadel at Tiryns is conspicuous for its mighty Cyclopean walls that led Homer to call it 'well -walled' in the Iliad. Indeed the Cyclops, according to Greek myth, built these fortifications for Proitos, king of Argos, who had the giants brought from Lycia in Asia Minor. The citadel, which covers an area of approximately 20,000 sq. m, is built on a low rocky knoll which rises barely eighteen meters above the Argive plain, and in the Mycenaean period was near the sea. Heinrich Schleimann, the excavator of Mycenae, and his colleague, the architect Wilhelm Dorpfeld, excavated the acropolis in 1885 and 1886. Today, the Tiryns excavations continue under the direction of the German Archaeological Institute.
The Tiryns citadel is the second most important prehistoric Argive acropolis after Mycenae. It was inhabited in the Neolithic period and had important settlements in the Early Helladic (3rd millennium BC), Middle Helladic (2000-1600 BC) and Early Mycenaean (16th -15th centuries BC) periods. The sturdy walls date to the 14th cent. BC for the ones of the Upper citadel and the 13th cent. BC for the Middle citadel. Fortification work was completed at the end of the 13th cent. BC with the construction of the walls of the Lower Citadel. The palace, residence of the ''wanax"(king), was erected on the Upper Citadel. Built during two major construction phases, the palace was decorated with remarkable wall-paintings. This Mycenaean palace, which kept archives in the first Greek script, Linear B', was the administrative, economic, artistic and military center for a wide region.
In its final, 13th century BC form, the acropolis had a fortified main gate, which led to the palace with its large and small ‘megarons’ (residential apartments), its courtyards and utility rooms. The extensive storage rooms, built in the great girth of the fortification walls, were accessible through cramped corbel-vaulted corridors, whose ceiling narrowed to a sharp angle at the top. A secondary entrance, protected by a strong curved bastion, opened to the west, towards the sea. In the Lower Acropolis, underground cisterns provided water in time of need, while several small gates facilitated communication with the extramural settlements which thrived around the acropolis. The settlement was located around the citadel, while the cemetery with its chamber tombs and single tholos tomb was located on the neighbouring Profitis Ilias hill.
The collapse of the Mycenaean palatial administrative system at the end of the thirteenth cent BC and the destruction of the palaces in the Argive citadels did not bring an end to life in the acropolis and in the settlement of Tiryns. Excavations have shown that the Lower Acropolis was densely occupied in the 12th cent. BC, the last stage of the Mycenaean civilisation,
and unearthed shrines with large terracotta figures.
