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This was a very busy site, particularly popular wi...

This was a very busy site, particularly popular with coaches. We were most keen to see the Tholos tombs and started with the two outside the walls of the acropolis, the tombs of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Aegisthus was open to the sky and Clytemnestra was bigger and the dome had been restored and was complete. Our voices sounded strange, as if we were using a microphone with a reverberation as we talked in the Tholos and, as we had the tomb to ourselves, we could laugh as we made noises. The entrance passage the dromos is built with huge blocks and is over 30 m long and the Tholos is over 10 m in diameter. These are monumental structures and are very impressive. We followed the crowds upwards and through the Lion Gate and walked around the site with French, Italian and far eastern languages all around us. Around Mycenae the hills are covered in scrub and olive groves and the city is in an attractive setting. The acropolis was walled and these walls are to a large part still intact and this gives a good sense of what the city would have been like. We walked down the road to the Tholos tomb known as the Treasury of Atreus. This is the largest Tholos tomb with an impressive 5.5 m high gateway in to the tholos and a tholos that is 14.5 m in diameter and 13 m high. The tholos is corbelled, the courses of stone beautifully overlapping. Light poured through the massive doorway in to the dark cavernous and atmospheric space, despite the other visitors.

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