Palace of Nestor

[1] The palace featured in the story of the Trojan War, as Homer tells us that Telemachus: went to Pylos and to Nestor, the shepherd of the people, and he received me in his lofty house and gave me kindly welcome, as a father might his own son who after a long time had newly come from afar: even so kindly he tended me with his glorious sons.

The palace is the primary structure within a larger Late Helladic era settlement, once probably surrounded by a fortified wall.

A joint Hellenic-American expedition was formed with the Greek Archaeological Service and the University of Cincinnati[6] and trial excavations of Epano Englianos were started on 4 April 1939.

A breakthrough in translating the Linear B tablets was achieved by English architect Michael Ventris in 1952, who found that it was an archaic form of Greek.

The translation of such tablets in the following years showed that they consisted of part of the royal archive, thus confirming that the palace served as the administrative, political and financial centre of Mycenaean Messenia.