Mavrozoumena Bridge

The monumental stone-built bridge is constructed on the ancient road that was leading from Arcadia and eastern Messenia to ancient Messene. The bridge stands exactly at the confluence of two streams into one which joins the Pamisos river to the south. The foundations and the lower part of the bridge are built with big rectangular stones which resemble to the masonry of the ancient Messene’s fortification walls and are dated to the Hellenistic period (late 4th-1st century BC). According to the morphological elements, the surviving arched superstructure of the bridge is dated in the 13th century AD, while the tradition attributes the construction to the wife of a man called Mavrozomis during the Medieval period (12th-) and thus was named "The Bridge of Mavrozoumena (i.e. wife of Mavrozo(u)mis). The bridge with nine arches has three arms meeting in the Y-shape at the point of the intersection of the two streams. Each one of the arms corresponds to one of the three roads that join here. The monument is a unique sample of a bridge constructed in reverse to the river flowand and was designed by pioneer architects of antiquity. It was repaired in the years of the Ottoman domination, as evidenced by the misspelling inscription on the bridge: "The bridge of Mavrozoumena was renovated by me Sinan Soubasios from Karitena (i.e. a village in Arcadia) on my expense”.