Mendenitsa (Greek: Μενδενίτσα), in the Middle Ages known as Mountonitsa (Μουντονίτσα) and Bodonitsa, Boudonitsa, or Vodonitsa (Βοδονίτσα),[2] is a village in Phthiotis, Greece.

[2] Mendenitsa only appears in the sources during the late Middle Ages, as the seat of the Marquisate of Bodonitsa, a Frankish Crusader state established in 1204 to guard the strategic pass of Thermopylae, that connected northern and southern Greece.

[8][10] The collapse of Catalan rule in 1388 liberated Bodonitsa from its tribute to Athens, but in 1394 a new and more dangerous appeared in the person of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I, who conquered most of Greece, including the nearby County of Salona.

Bayezid's death in the Battle of Ankara in 1402 gained a respite, that proved brief: already in 1408, the marquess Jacob Zorzi arranged for many of his subjects and their animals to find refuge at Karystos, and in 1410 the Ottomans invaded the marquisate and laid siege to Bodonitsa.

240 m along the longer axis from southeast to northwest; the inner circuit, which occupies the summit of the hill and has the form of a narrower, more elongated oval, measures ca.

35 m. The area enclosed by the inner circuit is divided into two parts by an east–west cross wall with a central tower and a single gate that provides entrance to the inner keep, at the northern end of the enclosure.