Bonriparo

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The north flank of the Bonriparo fortress

Bonriparo ( Greek Μονοπάρι , Monopari ) is the name of an originally Genoese fortress on Crete , which was built towards the end of the 12th or beginning of the 13th century. Their remains can be found not far from today's village Monopari in the municipality of Nikiforos Fokas of the municipality of Rethymno . The village, which belongs to the local community of Ano Valsomonero , has only 30 inhabitants according to the 2011 census.

Surname

The name of the fortress Bonriparo is of Italian origin and means 'good fortress' and apparently refers to the ideal location for a fortress on a mountain plateau that can only be climbed from one side. In Cretan Greek, the Italian word was blunted to monopari (Μονοπάρι) and in this form also transferred to the village closest to the fortress. Sometimes the fortress is also called Belriparo (as in Georgopoulou), which means 'beautiful fortress'.

location

The east tower, view of the gorge

The Bonriparo fortress was built on a hill, the east and south-west slopes of which drop steeply into two surrounding gorges. Today the hill bears the name Kastelos (Κάστελος, castle '), just like a village a little further to the northeast . Only the north side of the hill is less steep and high. The summit of the hill is formed by an almost exactly triangular rocky plateau sloping gently to the south (the illustrated lithograph from 1865 is perspective incorrect for probably illustrative reasons). At the north edge it reaches a height of over 400 meters and thus rises almost 100 meters above the bottom of the gorges that limit its east and south-west flanks. Large parts of the prefecture of Rethymno including the bay of Georgioupoli can be seen from the plateau . From today's point of view, the slightly mountainous landscape between Rethymno, Lappa and Agios Vasileos, which is undeveloped from an infrastructural point of view, is and was criss-crossed with a myriad of paths, the English Crete traveler Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt explicitly describes his journey to the Bonriparo Fortress as "very easy".

Today's visitor reaches the ruins of the fortress via a farm road that branches off the road to the east directly below the village of Monopari. At the first fork in the road, the path to the fortress turns left. From the village of Kastellos (Gr. Κάστελλος), a hiking trail marked on many maps as part of the European long-distance hiking trail E4 leads past the chapel of Agia Paraskevi from the north to the fortress.

Structure and condition

Remnants of the gate tower

The steep slopes made it unnecessary to build a wall on the east and south-west facing flanks of the plateau, so that the fortifications consisted of only one wall securing the north flank. This wall was supplemented by four towers, the second most easterly was the gate tower, this is still the only entrance to the fortress today. The serpentine ascending path was previously paved with marble and is now reminiscent of a mule path. The length of the fortress wall is more than 180 meters, the eastern boundary of the plateau is about 260 meters, the south-west about 220 meters. There are other remains of buildings on the approximately 40,000 m² plateau. On the hard-to-reach outer edges of the wall and some towers, the hewn corner stones are still in place, the gate tower with its well-preserved north wall has loopholes and the rest of the upper parapet can be seen.

On a lithograph by Thomas AB Spratt from 1865, two front walls can be seen in front of the main wall, none of which have survived today. Almost 40 years later, in 1903, the fortress was examined by the Italian explorer Giuseppe Gerola and photographed and measured. The condition recorded here is largely similar to that found today, remains of the fore walls are not visible, although the northern slope in 1903 had significantly fewer trees than today.

history

Illustration from 1865 by TAB Spratt

The fortress was built in 1206 by the Genoese pirate leader Enrico Pescatore , or an older one at the same location was expanded. Pescatore also called himself "Count of Malta". The Greek historian E. Lambrinakis assumes that the older castle was built as early as 1185 by the Cretan Melissinos family on the remains of the ancient city of Ionia . This makes the fortress one of the few remaining evidence of the brief Genoese suzerainty on Crete. The island was bought by Venice in 1204 after the fourth crusade, but the Doge State initially had too few resources to look after its newly acquired colony because of its involvement in other locations. This gave the Genoese competitors the opportunity to submit the island.

It is reported from 1217 that the lord of Bonriparo Pietro Filicanevo had horses and cattle stolen from a Cretan nobleman named I. Skordilitis . When Filicanevo did not comply with the request to return the stolen goods, scordilitis not only took back the animals stolen from him by force, which provoked the so-called Sivrites revolt (1217–1236). After clashes between Venetian colonialists and Cretan aristocratic families, the Bonriparo fortress finally came under Venetian suzerainty, like all of Crete.

Since the middle of the 13th century, almost during the entire Venetian rule over Crete and also during the time of the Ottoman occupation, no further evidence of the fort's fate has been available. It was not until 1865 that the English traveler Thomas AB Spratt visited the fortress ruins and mentioned them in his two-volume work Travels and Researches in Crete . However, there is a mention in a census from 1583 concerning the village of Monopari, which states that the 198 villagers are mainly craftsmen who “worked for the interests of the fortress”, which suggests that the fortress was occupied at the time.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Results of the 2011 census at the National Statistical Service of Greece (ΕΛ.ΣΤΑΤ) ( Memento from June 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (Excel document, 2.6 MB)
  2. ^ Maria Georgopoulou: Venice's Mediterranean Colonies, Cambridge University Press 2001, p. 18 ( PDF )
  3. ↑ see Kritiki Panorama Weblink
  4. ↑ Kostis Papageorgiou, see web link: "Το 1583 είχε 198 κατοίκους, που ήταν κυρίως τεχνίτες, οι οποίοι εξυπηρετούσαν ανάγάες τηυς ρους ρους ρους ρους ρους ρους ρους τηυς

Web links

Coordinates: 35 ° 17 ′ 25.9 ″  N , 24 ° 25 ′ 57.2 ″  E