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Agia Mavra Castle | The Medieval castle of Lefkada
The castle of Agia Mavra, which dominates the entrance of the island of Lefkada is one of the most imposing medieval buildings in Greece and is a model of fortification art of that time.
It is founded on a peninsula located between Lefkada and Acarnania and occupies an area of about 25,000 square meters with a rich war history as it was besieged a total of 12 times in the 7 centuries of its existence.
The castle of Agia Mavra has been very important for the defense of Lefkada for several centuries and many times the name Agia Mavra has been identified with Lefkada itself. This is due to the fact that for some time the capital of Lefkada had been moved inside the castle for security reasons. The name Agia Mavra probably comes from the Andeans of Valteros Vriennios who came from the city of Sainte Maure in France, in memory of their distant homeland.
It was one of the most important fortresses on the Ottoman western border and for this reason it was equipped with 126 cannons, a dense arrangement of rifles and a guard of 300 men in peacetime. The castle has undergone many modifications over the centuries and took its current hexagonal shape from the Ottomans shortly after the middle of the 16th century.
In its interior there are ruins mainly from the era of Venetian rule and in its northern part, ruins of the church of I.N. Pantocrator built on the site of a mosque by Morosini in 1684 during the Venetian-Turkish War.
In the castle there was a majestic church of Agia Mavra that was destroyed in 1810 as the English were trying to occupy the island. Today in the southeast of the castle there is a small church dedicated to Agia Mavra and her husband Agios Timotheos.
The first fortress construction was completed in 1302 AD. by Ioannis Orsini, (Giovanni Orsini) when he took Lefkada as a dowry for his marriage to the daughter of the Despot of Epirus Nikiforos I. It was originally a small military station with a small number of defenders.
In 1362 Leonardo I Tocco (Leonardo I Tocco, Earl of Kefallinia and Zakynthos), with the help of the rebellious inhabitants, annexed the island to his territory. The first small changes to the castle were made around 1395 by Charles I of Tokos and include double walls on all sides, except the one facing Acarnania, adding additional bastions and 8 cannons aimed at the Ionian Sea.
In the period 1566 to 1571 the Ottomans carried out extensive reconstructions in the castle both for defensive purposes and due to the increase of the inhabitants inside the fortress. Their completion gives the castle a hexagonal shape which it maintains to this day. Inside it had about 200 stone houses, 3 mosques, 2 Turkish baths, a seminary and 2 schools. In 1625, after a strong earthquake, the restoration of the damage brought the addition of an internal hydrated moat, which isolated the first fortress of the Orsini, which was the citadel of the castle.
On August 6, 1684, in the first victorious military operation for the Venetians in the 6th Venetian-Turkish War (1684-1699), a force of 10,000 men under the command of Francesco Morozini occupied the castle after a 16-day siege. The castle ottomans, according to the surrender agreement, were transferred to Preveza. The 600 pirates found inside were killed on the spot.
The first moves of the Venetians were to change the location of the island's capital and move it from the castle to the location of today's city, which was then called Amaxiki. The castle population was forced to relocate to the new capital. The castle underwent extensive reconstructions that turned it into a camp. Ottoman buildings were demolished.
In 1810 the English under General Oswald decide to occupy Lefkada. Theodoros Kolokotronis also participated in the operation. The siege of the castle begins on March 9 of the same year with a force of 4,000 men and ends on April 16, 1810 after an explosion caused by a shell in the church of Agia Mavra, which was used as a storage area for food and ammunition.The morale of the French soldiers after the multi-day siege, the negligible possibility of reinforcements but also the lack of ammunition caused by the explosion, lead the guard Kami to hand over the castle to the English. The forty-day siege led the English Major Church to call the castle "devilish", due to difficulty in occupying it.
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