NEOCHORI OF WEST MANI or NICHORI: It is a Municipal District of the Municipality of Lefktro, together with the settlement of Lefktro and the coastal Stoupa. It is located three kilometres from the junction of the provincial road Kalamata - Areopolis at the level of Stoupa and is amphitheatrically built on a hill. It is one of the new settlements of Mani that was created at the end of the 17th century (around 1680) when the Venetian administration of the region wanted to settle the area by transferring inhabitants from the southern villages of the captaincy of Zygos, in order to fill the population gap. It was basically settled by the inhabitants of Nomitsi. They settled and built houses from materials taken from the demolished citadel of the castle of Lefktro. In the following decade, a few settlers from Milea arrived and settled in the area. The ancient name of the area was Lefktra, which comes from the son of Perieris, Lefkippo, while Pausanias mentions 'Pefnou de stadia twenty stages away from Lefktra'. In the prehistoric city, a stone axe of the EH period, a marble head of Athena, a marble Ionic capstone, a marble head of a bearded man of Roman times, a clay female head of classical times have been found in the Kalamata Museum, as well as Middle Helladic and Mycenaean chamber tombs at the base of the hill. The fact that they honoured Asclepius, as the son of Leucippus' daughter Arsinoe and Zeus of Ithomatus, highlights the relations they had developed with the Messenians. In the Acropolis of ancient Lefktron there are remains of the Frankish castle built by William of Villehardouin in 1250 AD, which was ceded to the Byzantines in 1262 in exchange for the release of the prisoner William and the ruins of the temple of Athena.