Modern Description:
A fortified hilltop with walls of roughly worked large stones, just E of Vresto village. It is reachable by taking the cement road uphill from the iconostasio in mid-village, then following a clear path that runs up beside a streamlet and turns to reach the saddle from which the remains are accessible. Stretches of fortification wall, a few building traces, rooftiles, black-painted pottery. Dr. Joachim Heiden speculates that this site might be Pteleon, because he places Typaneai at Platiana. Pritchett (SAGT) believes this site to be Typaneai: "In his Neue Pelop. Wander. (Bern 1957) 55-59, Meyer writes that in 1954 he came upon the site, which lies ten minutes east of the village of Vresto, as it is spelled today. It apparently escaped the notice of all the travellers, including Leake, Gell, Dodwell, Boutan, Curtius, Philippson, Frazer, et al., as well as the survey teams of more recent times. Meyer's description of the remains is the only publication of the site to date. He refers to it as the “bedeutendste Ruine der ganzen Landschaft,” and his pl. 68 seems to confirm this, although Platiana and Alipheira are in the neighborhood. The north-south axis of the enceinte is given as about 500 meters, the east-west as about 200 m. The enclosed area with a great number of ancient houses and terraced walls is saturated with sherds “von archaischer Zeit bis in die Kaiserzeit.” He notes that the site is older than that of Platiana. The walls are “in polygonaler Technik,” and Meyer offers two photographs of towers. He adds (p.55) that the town was on the chief mountain-crossing from Lepreon and Phigaleia on one side and Platiana and Alipheira on the other. He offers no sketch, but publishes two inscriptions (= J. and L. Robert, REG 71 [1958] 249; SEG 16.281-282). If we ask why the impressive ruins were so long undiscovered, the answer probably lies in its inaccessibility. As recently as 1973, the guidebook, Akhaia and Ilia, published by the National Bank of Greece, said (p.46) that it could be reached only by “a difficult road” of eleven kilometers leading off from the Andritsaina highway at a tum-off called Tou Korba to Khani. It is noteworthy that A. Bon in his chapter titled “La Skorta” (pp.363-406) gives indications of having visited all the other sites inspected by Meyer, but does not mention Gardiki (or Vresto). The term “Skorta,” Bon (pp.363-365) explains, was a word applied in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the mountainous district south of the Alpheios between the Coastal plain and the interior basin of Megalopolis-Mantineia, which was dominated by the Franks, who constructed numerous chateaux in this difficult terrain to protect themselves against the Greeks. We followed the instructions in the 1973 guidebook, turning off from the Andritsaina-Krestena highway to go through a large earthquake resettlement village of Amygdalies, by-passing Myronia, to arrive at Vresto. On retuming to the site in 1987, we took an easier road, recently bulldozed, taking off from the coastal highway near Zacharo through the villages of Arene, Milea, and Trypes(renamed Chrysochori)." Pritchett SAGT Vol 6, pp53-54
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pteleum_(Elis)Wikidata ID: Q16622926Manto: 9719370DARE: 24869
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