⚔️ 439 BC – The Wall That Had to Be Demolished
The mighty fortifications did not save Samos from one of the most serious conflicts in its history. In 440 BC, the island rebelled against Athens, which at the time led the Delian League. The Athenians, under Pericles, intervened, and when the Samians refused to accept the terms imposed on them, a siege of the city began.
It lasted for nine months. Thucydides describes how the Athenians surrounded Samos with three camps on the landward side while simultaneously blockading it with their fleet from the sea. For a time, the Samians attempted to break the blockade, but in 439 BC they were eventually forced to surrender.
The terms were severe. The Samians had to demolish their walls, hand over hostages, surrender their fleet and agree to pay the costs of the war. Thucydides specifically lists the dismantling of the fortifications as one of the conditions of the city’s surrender.
For archaeologists, this brief account written more than two thousand years ago is extremely important. It helps explain why the Archaic fortifications of Samos did not survive as one continuous defensive system. The wall that had protected the city from its enemies for generations had to be demolished by the Samians themselves after they lost the war.
🧱 Around 300 BC – The Walls Rise Again
The Samians waited more than a century before rebuilding their fortifications. Major construction work began in the late 4th or early 3rd century BC, after the return to the island of Samians who had spent decades in exile. The new wall essentially followed the old circuit, but it was built in a completely different way.
Instead of the irregular blocks characteristic of the earlier fortifications, large, carefully dressed rectangular stones were laid in regular horizontal courses. Archaeologists refer to this technique as isodomic masonry. It was typical of the more advanced defensive architecture of the Hellenistic period, when cities had to contend with increasingly effective siege engines.
The entire defensive system also changed. The wall was reinforced with numerous towers. An information panel in the Archaeological Museum of Pythagorio mentions around 50 defensive towers, and one of the best-preserved examples still stands on a steep hillside.
It is not known with complete certainty, however, who was responsible for this enormous project. The rebuilding is generally dated to around 310–290 BC, and researchers have associated it, among others, with the period of Demetrius Poliorcetes’ dominance or with the rule of the Samian tyrant Duris.
And this is where there is a small trap for today’s visitor. Some of the most impressive sections of wall you will see around Pythagorio do not date from the time of Polycrates at all. The regular rows of huge rectangular blocks, particularly well preserved along the Kastri ridge and towards Glyfada, belong primarily to this later, Hellenistic rebuilding phase.
🏗️ How Was the First Wall Built?
The earliest monumental fortifications of Samos were built in the 6th century BC, although archaeologists cannot determine exactly when construction began. Their lower section was made from enormous limestone blocks laid using polygonal masonry. The stones were irregular in shape, but were carefully worked so that their edges fitted together as closely as possible. Some of the building material was quarried in the area around today’s Panagia Spiliani Monastery.
The entire wall, however, was not made of stone. Massive blocks formed its lower section, while above them the structure continued in sun-dried mud bricks. This may seem surprising today, but a stone base topped with mud-brick construction was a well-known method of building fortifications in the Greek world. It is therefore hardly surprising that, after more than two and a half thousand years, it is the stone sections that have survived best.
The first wall also differed from the fortifications built here several centuries later. It did not yet have the long series of massive towers that characterised the later defensive system. This is why the surviving sections of the walls of Samos do not all look the same. Irregular polygonal blocks may indicate the earlier phase, while regular courses of rectangular stones belong mainly to the major rebuilding of the Hellenistic period.
👑 Did Polycrates Really Build Them?
The walls surrounding ancient Samos are often called the Walls of Polycrates. The name is convenient, but it can be slightly misleading. Polycrates ruled Samos in the 6th century BC, during the period of the island’s greatest power, but there is no evidence that he was responsible for building the entire first circuit of fortifications.
What we do know is that the walls already existed during his reign. Around 524 BC, the Spartans besieged Samos, and Herodotus describes both an attack on the wall and two towers – one standing by the sea and another high on the ridge. Two Spartans even managed to get behind the wall together with the retreating defenders.
Interestingly, when Herodotus lists three extraordinary achievements of the Samians, the walls are not among them. Instead, he marvels at the Tunnel of Eupalinos, the breakwater protecting the harbour and the enormous Temple of Hera. Nor does he directly attribute these structures to Polycrates – he describes them as the works of the Samians. It was only later authors who began to associate the island’s great building projects more closely with its most famous ruler.
Herodotus does, however, provide another fascinating reference to the fortifications. After Polycrates defeated the Milesians and their allies from Lesbos, prisoners from Lesbos were said to have dug a moat around the fortifications of Samos. If we accept this account, the city’s defensive system not only existed during the tyrant’s reign but was also being expanded.
The term “Walls of Polycrates” can therefore still be encountered on Samos today, but it is worth remembering that it is better understood as a traditional name for the fortifications associated with the period when Samos was at the height of its power, rather than evidence that the entire wall was one great construction project undertaken by Polycrates himself.
Walls of Ancient Samos – Fortifications Hidden Around Pythagorio
Ancient Samos was one of the most powerful cities in the Greek world, and its inhabitants made sure that reaching it was no easy task. The city was surrounded by an impressive system of fortifications about 6.5 kilometres long, stretching from the sea across the hills surrounding present-day Pythagorio. This was not, however, a single wall built at one point in time. Over the centuries, the fortifications were demolished, rebuilt and strengthened, and their successive layers tell the story of the city just as vividly as its temples and monuments.
🧱 A Wall That Keeps Emerging from the Landscape
Around Pythagorio, you can pass sections of the ancient wall several times before realising what you are actually looking at. A stretch of stone wall beside the road, a few huge blocks among the bushes, a fragment of masonry on a hillside. Elsewhere, a stone structure climbs almost straight up towards the ridge. These are not the remains of separate buildings. Many of them belonged to one enormous system of fortifications that surrounded ancient Samos.
Today, the wall is not a single, clearly defined archaeological attraction. It survives in separate sections scattered around Pythagorio – sometimes clearly visible, sometimes almost disappearing among modern buildings and vegetation. And that is exactly why it helps to know what to look for. Once you recognise these distinctive stone structures, you will begin to notice them in more and more places.
📏 6.5 Kilometres Around the City
The fortifications of ancient Samos were about 6.5 kilometres long. For an ancient city, this was an enormous circuit – especially as the walls did not enclose only houses, streets and public buildings. Unbuilt slopes and hills were also incorporated within them. This was no accident. Higher ground was strategically important, and leaving it outside the walls would have made it easier for an enemy to control the city from above.
The wall was closely adapted to the natural terrain. On the seaward side, the defensive system was connected with the fortifications of the ancient harbour, while inland it climbed the hills surrounding the city. It ran through the Kastelli area and continued along the ridges above the route of the Eupalinos aqueduct, before descending towards Glyfada and eventually reaching the coast again. In this way, the protected area included not only the city itself, but also places that were important to its functioning and defence.
What is particularly interesting is that this extensive circuit had already been established during the earliest phase of the fortifications. Later walls, although rebuilt and constructed using different techniques, essentially enclosed the same area. This means that from the very beginning, the builders of the first fortifications were thinking not only about protecting the built-up city, but about defending the entire area it needed.
🔥 One More Siege
The new fortifications did not remain untouched for long. Around 201–200 BC, Samos found itself at the centre of conflicts involving Philip V, King of Macedon, who was attempting to expand his influence across the islands of the Aegean and the coast of Asia Minor. During this period, parts of the city’s fortifications were destroyed in a siege. An information panel in the museum devoted to the fortifications identifies this event as the reason for another phase of repairs to the walls.
This time, the entire defensive system was not rebuilt from scratch. Damaged sections of the Hellenistic fortifications were repaired using the existing walls and towers. As a result, archaeologists can identify not only the earlier Archaic wall and the major rebuilding of around 300 BC, but also traces of later repairs among the surviving remains.
This clearly shows why the walls of ancient Samos cannot be regarded as a single structure built at one particular moment. Over several centuries, they were demolished, rebuilt and repaired as the fortunes of the city changed. Stones that today appear to form a single wall may therefore belong to different stages of its history.
🚰 The Wall and the Tunnel of Eupalinos
The Tunnel of Eupalinos and the fortifications were built during the same period of great development on Samos, and together they formed something extremely important for the city’s security: a protected water-supply system. The tunnel itself cut through Mount Kastro for 1,036 metres, but it was only the central section of a much longer aqueduct that carried water from the Agiades spring to the city.
This is where the route of the walls becomes particularly significant. The northern entrance to the tunnel lay outside the fortifications, while the southern entrance was already within the protected area of the city. From the north, water was carried to the tunnel through an underground channel about 890 metres long, while on the southern side another underground section, around 620 metres long, carried it onwards to the city’s reservoirs and water collection points.
This arrangement was extremely important during a siege. An enemy could cut off an exposed aqueduct running above ground, but here most of the water’s route was hidden underground, and once it had passed through the mountain it was already behind the city’s defensive line. Researchers point to the need to protect the city’s water supply from besieging forces as the most likely explanation for this solution.
Interestingly, when you look at a map of the entire system, the wall and the aqueduct almost seem to “work together”. The fortifications run along the ridge above the area of the Tunnel of Eupalinos, while the water passes beneath the mountain into the protected city.
It is a good example of how the defence of ancient Samos involved much more than simply building a high wall. It was also necessary to ensure that thousands of people sheltering behind it could survive a long siege.
🚰 The Wall and the Tunnel of Eupalinos
The Tunnel of Eupalinos and the fortifications were built during the same period of great development on Samos, and together they formed something extremely important for the city’s security: a protected water-supply system. The tunnel itself cut through Mount Kastro for 1,036 metres, but it was only the central section of a much longer aqueduct that carried water from the Agiades spring to the city.
This is where the route of the walls becomes particularly significant. The northern entrance to the tunnel lay outside the fortifications, while the southern entrance was already within the protected area of the city. From the north, water was carried to the tunnel through an underground channel about 890 metres long, while on the southern side another underground section, around 620 metres long, carried it onwards to the city’s reservoirs and water collection points.
This arrangement was extremely important during a siege. An enemy could cut off an exposed aqueduct running above ground, but here most of the water’s route was hidden underground, and once it had passed through the mountain it was already behind the city’s defensive line. Researchers point to the need to protect the city’s water supply from besieging forces as the most likely explanation for this solution.
Interestingly, when you look at a map of the entire system, the wall and the aqueduct almost seem to “work together”. The fortifications run along the ridge above the area of the Tunnel of Eupalinos, while the water passes beneath the mountain into the protected city.
It is a good example of how the defence of ancient Samos involved much more than simply building a high wall. It was also necessary to ensure that thousands of people sheltering behind it could survive a long siege.
🗺️ Where Can You See the Walls Today?
I will complete this section after my next visit to Samos. I want to show you specific, verified places where surviving sections of the fortifications can be seen – together with GPS coordinates and information on how to reach them.
👀 Don’t Miss
More coming soon.
🧭 Practical Information
I will complete this section after checking the locations in person, so that the GPS coordinates and information about access, parking and walking routes to the individual sections of the walls are genuinely useful.