Agamemnon's citadel — the Bronze Age palace that launched the Trojan War, buried under myth until Schliemann dug it up
Mycenae in the northeastern Peloponnese is both an archaeological site and the name of the Late Bronze Age civilisation (1600–1100 BCE) that dominated the Aegean before the Dark Ages — a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999 (combined with nearby Tiryns). The hilltop citadel above the modern village of Mykines preserves the Lion Gate (the most famous piece of Mycenaean art — two heraldic lions flanking a column, carved around 1250 BCE and the first monumental sculpture in European history), the Royal Grave Circle A (where Heinrich Schliemann in 1876 found the gold death masks, including the "…
Mycenae was inhabited from the Neolithic period but reached its apogee between 1600 and 1200 BCE as the dominant power of the Aegean Bronze Age — the Mycenaeans sacked Minoan Crete, traded with Egypt, and are the historical kernel of the heroes in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The citadel was destroyed around 1200 BCE in the widespread Bronze Age Collapse. Heinrich Schliemann excavated the site in 1876 convinced he had found Agamemnon's palace — the gold masks he uncovered are now in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. The site was partially excavated and cleared throughout the 20th ce…