There are ancient tombs about 400 meters from the main palace said to have housed King Menelaus and his wife Helen (of Troy).

Pellana has its roots in the Greek word pella, which can mean "stone" or a "rocky hill".

Pellana, linguistically, is a cognate of Pella, the capital of Macedonia but also of Pallene, a deme of Attica, Pelle of Ithaca, Pellene of Achaia, Palamedion, the acropolis of Nauplion, Pelion of Epirus, etc., all of them being "citadels on a cliff" or a hill, except for Pelion of Thessaly which is a mountain.

It had ceased to be a town in the time of Pausanias, but he noticed there a temple of Asclepius, and two fountains, named Pellanis and Lanceia.

Below Pellana, was the Characoma (Greek: Χαράκωμα), a fortification or wall in the narrow part of the valley; and near the town was the ditch, which according to the law of Agis, was to separate the lots of the Spartans from those of the Perioeci.

l. c.) Pausanias says that Pellana was 100 stadia from Belemina; but he does not specify its distance from Sparta, nor on which bank of the river it stood.

Burliá has two peaked summits, on each of which stands a chapel; and the bank of the river, which is only separated from the mountain by a narrow meadow, is supported for the length of 200 yards by a Hellenic wall.

; Boblaye, Récherches, &c. p. 76 ; Ross, Reisen im Peloponnes, p. 191; Curtius, Peloponnesos, vol.