The inscriptions on this drawing suggest that Lear began working on it while in Arta, a town in the Epirus region of north Greece, in autumn 1848, before reworking it on his return there in May 1849. This view shows the fortified town walls beside the River Arachthos. A minaret stands out amid the town rooftops. Lear used this drawing as the basis for a lithographic illustration in his ‘Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania and Northern Greece’, published in 1851. This book contained twenty lithographs, accompanied by text drawn from Lear’s extensive travel journals.