Mycenaean Architecture

Mycenaean architecture is the building tradition of the Late Bronze Age civilization that dominated mainland Greece from roughly 1600 to 1100 BC, known above all for the fortified citadels of Mycenae and Tiryns. Its defining structural technique is Cyclopean masonry, walls built from massive, roughly worked limestone boulders fitted together with minimal use of mortar, so called because later Greeks believed only the mythical one eyed Cyclopes could have moved stones so large. The Lion Gate at Mycenae, the main entrance through the citadel walls, is capped by a huge stone lintel and a triangular relief carved with two lionesses flanking a central column, one of the earliest surviving examples of monumental sculpture in Europe. Mycenaean rulers were also buried in tholos tombs, beehive shaped chambers built from corbelled rings of stone that narrow gradually toward a domed ceiling, the grandest of which, the so called Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae, remained the tallest and widest dome built anywhere in the world for well over a thousand years after its construction.