The more intact and accessible of two castles that lie on either side of Navarino Bay, this was built by the Turks in 1573 on the hilltop at the southern edge of town, off the road to Methoni. Within its formidable walls is an excellent little museum with exhibits on underwater archaeology, a citadel, a mosque converted into a church (under renovation) and a courtyard surrounded by dungeons (used as a prison to contain warring Maniots until the 1900s).
The well-presented museum focuses on the remains of several shipwrecks: the marble columns and stone sarcophagi that were found off the island of Sapienza, near Methoni; and the remains of the Mentor, the ship that carried the Parthenon Marbles that then had to be retrieved from the deep.
