[2] In the Middle Ages the place was known as Drobolitsa, Droboltsá, or Dorboglitza, either from the Greek Hydropolitsa, 'Water City' or perhaps from the South Slavic for 'Plain of Oaks'.

[3][4] The association made by 18th- and 19th-century scholars with the idea of the "three cities" (Τρίπολις, τρεις πόλεις "three cities": variously Callia, Dipoena and Nonacris, mentioned by Pausanias without geographical context,[5] or Tegea, Mantineia and Pallantium, or Mouchli, Tegea and Mantineia[6] or Nestani, Mouchli and Thana), were considered paretymologies by G.C.

[citation needed] Little is known about Drobolitza, but it is included in a list of abandoned Byzantine sites from 1467, corresponding with the years after Mehmed's conquest of this part of Greece.

[10] However, following the Ottoman conquest of Morea, it seems that the cultural and administrative centre of the Tegean plain was moved from Mouchli to Drobolitza.

Total massacre and destruction of the city was avoided after intervention of Osman bey, leader of the Albanian mercenaries.

Tripoli was renamed and rebuilt and was developed as one of the main cities of the Kingdom of Greece, serving as the capital of the Arcadia district.

During the 19th and the 20th centuries the city emerged to be the administrative, economic, commercial and transportation center of central and south Peloponnese.

Ιt is located in the center of the Peloponnese, at the western border of a large basin (a polje at about 650 m in altitude, a length of ca.

Because of its inland location and high altitude, Tripoli's climate has some continental characteristics, such as some very cold lows during the winter months.

[19] The peculiarity of all plains and basins in Arcadia is the coincidence with intensive karstification: Water seeps into the underground, rather than eroding and draining the topography by surface waterways.

When winter rains are heavy, the ground is flooded or temporary lakes form, even today, as drainage through ponors is often slow which causes land cultivation delays.

The siege of Tripolitsa was made famous in the folk (Δημοτικό) song "40 παλικάρια από την Λιβαδειά" (Forty lads from Livadeia)[27] Tripoli, Greece is twinned with: