Mycenae: Kingdom of Agamemnon
A curated tour of ancient Mycenae's most extraordinary monuments — a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Peloponnese, Greece, that was the most powerful city of the Bronze Age Greek world (1600–1100 BC), capital of the civilization that fought the Trojan War, and home to some of the most breathtaking prehistoric monuments in all of Europe.
Trip Stops
- 1
The most magnificent tholos tomb in the ancient world — a corbelled beehive dome 13.5 metres high and 14.5 metres wide, built around 1250 BC with perfect dry-stone precision using stones weighing up to 120 tonnes. For over 1,000 years it held the record as the world's largest dome, surpassed only by the Roman Pantheon. Its 36-metre dromos (entry passage) is still lined with its original ashlar conglomerate walls, and the entrance lintel alone weighs 120 tonnes.
📍 Mycenae, Peloponnese, Greece
- 2
The second-grandest tholos at Mycenae — built around 1220 BC, just decades after the Treasury of Atreus, and named after Agamemnon's queen who famously murdered him on his return from Troy. Rivals the Treasury in scale, with a beautifully preserved corbelled dome and an elaborately decorated façade with carved half-columns. The Hellenistic theatre built over its mound is still visible, and a woman's grave was found in its entrance passage.
📍 Mycenae, Peloponnese, Greece
- 3
An essential stop before the citadel — a well-designed museum displaying pottery, bronze weapons, frescoes, and gold artefacts excavated from across the site. While the most famous finds (the Mask of Agamemnon and the gold grave goods) are in Athens, the local museum provides outstanding context and includes several remarkable objects, including Mycenaean frescoes and a display on Heinrich Schliemann's 1876 excavations.
📍 Mycenae, Peloponnese, Greece
- 4
The most iconic monument of Bronze Age Europe — the grand gateway of the Mycenaean citadel, built around 1250 BC with a massive 12-tonne lintel and a triangular relief of two lionesses (or lions) flanking a pillar, the first monumental sculpture in European history. Its ingenious design forced attackers to expose their unshielded right sides to defenders above, and it was so impressive that Pausanias described it standing in the 2nd century AD.
📍 Mycenae, Peloponnese, Greece
- 5
The discovery that changed history — six royal shaft graves excavated by Heinrich Schliemann in 1876, just inside the Lion Gate, containing 19 bodies buried with around 15 kg of gold including swords, diadems, gold cups, and five extraordinary gold death masks. Schliemann famously telegraphed the Greek king: 'I have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon.' The Mask of Agamemnon he found is now the most iconic object in the Athens National Archaeological Museum.
📍 Mycenae, Peloponnese, Greece
- 6
The most impressive Bronze Age fortifications in Greece — massive limestone walls up to 8 metres thick and 12 metres high built from rough-hewn limestone blocks weighing up to 6 tonnes each, so enormous that later Greeks believed only the mythological one-eyed giants (Cyclopes) could have moved them, giving rise to the term 'Cyclopean masonry'. The walls were extended twice in the 13th century BC, the second time to enclose the Grave Circle and the secret underground cistern.
📍 Mycenae, Peloponnese, Greece
- 7
The seat of the most powerful king in the Bronze Age Greek world — perched on the summit of the citadel hill at 278 metres, with sweeping views across the Argive plain to the sea. The palace's central megaron (throne room) housed a great circular hearth and the king's throne, its floor and walls once painted with vivid frescoes. The ground plan of the megaron — a porch, a vestibule, and a great hall — directly influenced the design of the classical Greek temple.
📍 Mycenae, Peloponnese, Greece
- 8
The older and more recently discovered of Mycenae's two royal cemeteries — 26 graves from the 17th–16th century BC, found by accident in 1951 during excavations of the Tomb of Clytemnestra. Unlike the later Grave Circle A, it was never looted, preserving an electrum death mask, gold ornaments, and weapons in situ. The burials reveal a warrior aristocracy of extraordinary wealth 400 years before the Trojan War.
📍 Mycenae, Peloponnese, Greece
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