Gathering

Laughing sweetly, Amphinomos spoke to his companions: "No need for such a message, they are here! Either some god told them, or they themselves saw the ship of Telemachos as it sailed by, but were unable to overtake it." So he spoke, and they stood up and went to the shore of the sea.

Suitors walk to the harbor

Odyssey Book 16 line 337-341 Barry B Powell
Odyssey Book 16 line 341-343 Barry B Powell
Odyssey Book 16 line 343-345 Barry B Powell

Quickly the men dragged the black ship up on the land and their high-spirit aides off-loaded the gear.

After having established a possible location for both palace and city, next came the search for a suitable place for the gathering. This turned out to be the most challenging part of our search in the area, it actually took years to locate. Let's return to the suitors who are mightily relieved to have spotted their comrades sailing into the harbour:

Telemachos' ship sailed into the harbour at 9:30, both the suitors and Eumaios noticed the ambush ship sailing in at 10:45, which means just over an hour's difference. When the suitors detect the ambush ship, they walk downhill to the shore, a roughly 30 minute walk, so they meet the ship around 11:15.

Allowing enough time to drag the ship unto shore, let's say they set off again around 11:45 to go somewhere private to devise a new approach.

Then they went in a bunch into the place of assembly, and they would allow no other of the young men, or of the old, to sit with them.

They can hardly plot in plain sight, so I think it's fair to assume they're not gathering in a square in the city, as some scholars have claimed. It won't be in the palace either, this place of assembly must be somewhere out of the way, preferably a bit secluded from everything else, in a forest perhaps?

We have a rough idea where to look, so we can start to explore. As mentioned above, it turned out to be much more difficult than expected but I'll now explain how we managed to find it in the end.

Palace

City

Harbour