At the medieval site of Mystras in the Peloponnese region of Greece, visitors marvel at the majestic cliff-side ruins of a Byzantine walled city, including a palace built for despots and monasteries festooned with intricate frescoes.
Now, they also get to glimpse hulking olive-green water tanks, sprinkler towers and bright red fire-hose containers dotted across the 84-acre site.
As climate change fuels more and bigger wildfires, Greece is beefing up protection for iconic archaeological sites. But the measures, including installing large water pumps and backup electricity generators, clearing vegetation, and paving roads for fire trucks, can affect the visual character of the centuries-old antiquities.
For archaeologists, such work is necessary but bittersweet.
Panagiotis Perdikoulias, an archaeologist at Mystras, said that when workers installed water tanks and laid a snaking concrete road from the palace to an exit, his heart hurt a little.
“At the beginning, it was kind of alien,” Mr. Perdikoulias said.
“A few years ago you could have never imagined this kind of work could be set up on the site like this,” he added. “But over the past few years, the threat of climate change has been extremely acute.”
In Greece, where wildfires killed several people this summer, including three firefighters and two men aboard a helicopter, large blazes that burn more than 500 acres at a time have become more frequent and intense. There are now fears of a repeat of the brutal fires that in 2007 neared ancient Olympia, the site where the Olympic Games were first played.
Trying to avert damage at ruins, the Greek government passed regulations in June outlining fire safety measures for archaeological sites, including hydrants and the pruning of vegetation. That made Greece one of only a few countries to have specific guidelines for protecting monuments from the ravages of climate change, according to UNESCO.
Already, officials have taken protection measures at more than 60 sites, the Culture Ministry has reported. Around Philippi, a walled city founded more than two millenniums ago, a water pumping station was built into the hillside. At Mycenae, a Bronze Age site narrowly avoided by a wildfire in 2020, regional authorities installed fire-hose containers.
Lina Mendoni, the Greek culture minister, said in a statement that the effort “shifts the mind-set from restoration after disaster to systematically building resilience.”
The regulations call for measures that do not significantly alter the sites’ appearance. Still, “all these things have a visual impact,” said Krista Pikkat, director of culture and emergencies for UNESCO, which has listed 21 world heritage sites in Greece.
“There’s always this balance that you need to find,” Ms. Pikkat said, adding that the authorities understand they “don’t have a choice.”
Mystras, which hosts about 150,000 visitors a year, is particularly vulnerable because it is in one of the hottest spots in the Peloponnese region, said Mr. Perdikoulias, the archaeologist.
The site, perched on a steep incline stretching more than 2,000 feet above sea level, is also at risk because access is difficult, and the closest fire station is about three miles away. Mystras is surrounded by pine and cypress forests and overlooks a valley of olive orchards, all potential fuel for fire.
From 2022 to 2025, with European Union subsidies, Greece spent nearly $4 million to install protection measures at Mystras. Regional authorities built a 5,000-foot pipeline from a municipal reservoir to the pumps.
During the installation, workers unearthed important archaeological finds, including cells where monks slept and a portion of a Byzantine road, Mr. Perdikoulias said. Because of a lack of time or money to fully extract or restore those finds, he added, workers simply covered over the discoveries for future generations, taking care to avoid laying pipes and tanks nearby.
The measures also include loudspeakers to broadcast evacuation announcements to visitors in case of fire. That is another essential precaution, said Gavriil Xanthopoulos, an expert in forest fires, because visitors are usually “in the place for the first time, they’re relaxed, their mind is not on disaster.”
Tourists visiting the site recently acknowledged the need to protect the antiquities from fire.
Usuf Sarrys, 18, a trainee plumber who was visiting with family from Sydney, Australia, said he had noticed the “heaps” of fire-hose boxes. “It’s good that they have them just in case,” he said. “You don’t want to have this whole place burn down.”
To keep up the protection in the long term, the Greek government must find ways of funding the maintenance of the facilities even after E.U. funds ebb. Regularly pruning vegetation, for example, is expensive and might require budget trade-offs, said Emmanuel Vassilakis, a climate expert at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
The government may have to make tough decisions when allocating budgets, Mr. Vassilakis noted. “But I think that we have to persuade the people that we need to protect our past and our culture.”
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