page_title: Messene
section_title: Public buildings and monuments
hierarchical_section_title: Messene / History / Messene restored by the Thebans / Public buildings and monuments
caption_attribution_description: English: Messene, the Odeon, in the background the Agora with the Asklepieion can be seen Deutsch: Messene, das Odeon, im Hintergrund die Agora mit dem Asklepieion
context_page_description: Messene, officially Ancient Messene, is a local community of the municipal unit Ithomi, of the municipality of Messini within the regional unit of Messenia in the region of Peloponnese, one of 13 regions into which Greece has been divided. Before 2011 it held the same position in the administrative hierarchy, according to Law 2539 of 1997, the Kapodistrias Plan, except that Ithomi was an independent municipality and Ancient Messene was a local division within it.
  Most of the area of Ancient Messene contains the ruins of the large classical city-state of Messene refounded by Epaminondas in 369 BC, after the battle of Leuctra and the first Theban invasion of the Peloponnese. Epaminondas invited the return to their native land of all the families that had gone into exile from Messenia during its long struggle with and servitude under the military state of Sparta, now finished as a conquering state. This new Messene, today's Ancient Messene, was constructed over the ruins of Ithome, an ancient city originally of Achaean Greeks, destroyed previously by the Spartans and abandoned for some time.
  Currently the substantial ruins are a major historical attraction.
context_section_description: Pausanias has left us a description of the city (iv. 3 1?33), its chief temples and statues, its springs, its market-place and gymnasium, the Asclepieion, its place of sacrifice, the tomb of the hero Aristomenes and the temple of Zeus Ithomatas on the summit of the acropolis with a statue by the famous Argive sculptor Ageladas, originally made for the Messenian helots who had settled at Naupactus at the close of the third Messenian War.
  The other buildings which can be identified are the theatre, the stadium, the council chamber or Bouleuterion, and the propylaeum of the market, while on the shoulder of the mountain are the foundations of a small temple, probably that of Artemis Laphria.
caption: View of the Odeon.
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