Modern Description:
The summit of Megalo Vouno, above the cement works and major quarry, is crowned by a substantial Hellenistic fortress with 2-meter-thick walls and at least two gates guarded by square towers using large, roughly squared limestone blocks. About 200 x 130 m. Roof tiles and traces of internal structures. The E and S of the hill are also protected, lower down the slope, by the so-called Anaphorites fortification wall, which must have been built to defend Chalkidan territory from Boeotian incursions. Access is by a muddy dirt road that angles left (NW) about 650 m N of the Ag. Stephanos monastery. At the saddle (power pylon), a faint trail with red dots goes E up the ridge and takes one to the fortress in about 35 minutes, paralleling the Anaphorites rubble wall on the S slope above the quarry. Frazer (1898) describes it as follows: The wall exists, though in ruins, almost all round the hill with hardly a break and in its full thickness, which is about 7 ft. 6 in. In some places it is still more than 6 ft. high. It consists of an outer and an inner face of rude irregular polygonal masonry with a core of small stones. Even in the outer face of the wall the blocks are not large, and in the inner face they are as a rule a good deal smaller. The wall is best pre- served on the northern side of the hill, where it extends along pretty uniformly at a height of 4 and 5 feet. Next to it the east wall is best preserved. On the other hand the western and southern walls are mostly in ruins. But it was the south side that was most carefully fortified, as may be seen by the square towers which here project from the curtain at short intervals of 20 yards or so, whereas on the other sides towers hardly occur at all. The reason for this specially strong fortification on the south is that on this side the hill sends out a long ridge descending towards the bay of Aulis. This was therefore the most accessible and most easily assailable side of the fortress. For the same reason the two chief gates, each flanked with two square towers, are to be seen on the south side of the hill. One of these gateways, at the south-east corner, is 5ft. 8 in. wide. The other principal gateway, a good deal to the west, is 6 ft. 6 in. wide. The tower which flanks it on the west is about 22 ft. broad on the face and projects 13 ft. from the curtain. The masonry of this tower is much more careful than that of the walls and approaches to the quadrangular or ashlar in style ; the blocks are hewn and better fitted. On its western face it is standing to a height of from 4 to nearly 7 feet. The tower is set at a distance of about 9 feet to the west of the gateway. The tower on the eastern side of the gateway is more ruinous. Two of the other towers in the south wall have each a passage about 3 feet wide opening into them through the thickness of the wall. Another of them, about 20 feet broad and projecting 18 feet from the curtain, is built of large hewn blocks laid in roughly horizontal courses. In the eastern wall there is another gateway, 5 ft. 8 in. wide, facing north-east toward Chalcis, and beside a tower at the north-western corner of the fortress there is a postern 3 feet wide opening to the west. The number of towers of which there are undoubted remains is eight or nine. On the inner side of the eastern wall there are remains of a staircase leading down from the top of the wall. Although the ground enclosed by the fortification-walls is rugged with rocks and at present overgrown with shrubs, there are vestiges of human habitation on it in the shape of broken stones and pottery ; but these vestiges may be modern. Among the shrubs with which the ground is encumbered are holly-oaks and lentisks.
Info: ToposText editors 
(JBK)
