Late Helladic fortification walls on the Greek mainland are found around citadels, not the entire city or site. The citadels appear to have housed the central administration and accommodation for an elite class of citizens. They were built on the hills, presumably as another layer of fortification. I will examine the sites of Gla, Midea, Tiryns, and Mycenae to look for similarities and differences in the design and architecture of their fortifications, as well as arguments about the purpose of the fortifications at these sites. I will also explore how some sites were hindered or helped defensively and economically by their location and use of fortifications. Mycenaean sites employed Cyclopean masonry as a means of constructing fortification walls. Cyclopean masonry was used in all Mycenaean fortified sites and is constructed using large flat-faced blocks with smaller stones inserted into the cracks (Dickinson, 1994). The walls would have two faces and the space would then be filled with rubble. It is believed that the fortification walls were not really intended to fortify a citadel, but were a means of displaying the city's wealth (Loader, 1995). According to Loader (1995) Cyclopean masonry was a distinct style of Greece. The use of cantilevered vaults was also common. The Mycenaeans did not know the principle of the true arch, so they stacked the blocks on top of each other and pushed the ends of both sides to create a kind of vault before creating a smooth internal surface. This method requires heavy weight on the back of the blocks used to make the vault to prevent a collapse. Gla, or Goulas, is a site located on what was once an island in Lake Kopais. There is evidence that the lake was drained during the Late Helladic period (Lawrence...... center of paper...... Mycenae also changed over time. Each site shows similarities between the Mycenaean culture as well as differences based on region or the city's distance from an important trade route that makes them interesting to study. Works Cited Dickinson, O. (1994 The Aegean bronze age Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UniversityPress. Iakovidis, S.E. (1983). Countries. Bassi: Brill.Lawrence, A.W. (1996). Greek Architecture (5th ed.): Yale UniversityPress.Loader, NC (1995) The definition of cyclopean: an investigation into the origins of the LH III fortifications on mainland Greece : Durham University.Taylour, W. (1983).The Mycenaeans New York, NY: Thames and Hudson Inc.Zangger, E. (1994). //www.jstor.org/stable/506635