Kalamata - Archaeological Museum of Messenia

With a population of over 70,000, Kalamata is the capital and main port of of Messenia. Today Kalamata is known as the home of the Kalamata olives and Kalamata olive oil.

Kalamata occupies the site of an ancient city, probably that of ancient Pharae, a city already mentioned by Homer.
In medieval times, Kalamata is first mentioned in the 10th-century and got following the Fourth Crusade was conquered by Frankish feudal lords William of Champlitte and Geoffrey of Villehardouin in 1205. Kalamata remained in Frankish hands until , coming under the control of the Byzantine Despotate of the Morea in 1428.

Kalamata was occupied by the Ottomans in 1481. In 1659, during the war between Ottomans and Venetians over Crete, the Venetians captured Kalamata. The town and its castle were plundered and destroyed, and all able-bodied men were carried off to serve as rowers in the Venetian galleys.
The Ottomans reoccupied Kalamata in the war of 1715 and controlled it until the Greek War of Independence, when Kalamata was the first city to be liberated as the Greeks rose in the War of Independence in 1821.

The Archaeological Museum of Messenia, built on the site of the city's old market hall, antiquities from Messenia from prehistoric and Mycenaean times to the Byzantine and Latin eras



Figurine of greenish steatite
portraying a seated naked female

It has a hanging hole and was probably worn as a pendant

Late neolithic period
5th - 4th millenium BC