The Lion Gate is the main entrance to the Bronze Age citadel of Mycenae, in the Argolid region of southern Greece. It was built around 1250 BC, in the Late Helladic IIIB period. Pausanias mentioned it in the second century AD, and the gate was never buried. Heinrich Schliemann dug the area south of it in 1876.
The opening is about 10 feet (3.1 meters) wide and 10 feet (2.95 meters) high. Two monoliths carry a lintel measuring 15 by 7 by 3 feet (4.5 by 2.0 by 0.8 meters), and a corbelled arch above relieves its load. The approach walls are conglomerate.
Above the lintel, a limestone slab shows two lionesses in high relief on either side of a Minoan-type column. Their heads, made separately, are lost. It is the only surviving monumental sculpture of Mycenaean Greece.
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