Cape Sounio Morning Private Tour – 6 Hours

Seventy kilometres of coast road south from the city, worth the drive on its own: Glyfada, Vouliagmeni, Varkiza, the beaches and marinas — and then the road empties, leaving nothing but rock and sea to the end of Attica.

There has been a sanctuary on this headland since the Archaic period. The Persians destroyed the first temple in 480 BC, during the campaign in which Xerxes forced the pass at Thermopylae and then razed Athens itself. The temple that stands here now replaced it — built between 444 and 440 BC, as part of Pericles’ building programme, in the same years as the Parthenon.

It is Doric, designed for this cliff: thirty-four columns originally, cut slimmer than the Doric norm — perhaps to withstand the wind on this exposed cape — from local Agrileza marble. Fifteen still stand after two and a half thousand years of salt and earthquakes. Inside stood a bronze statue of Poseidon, more than six metres tall.

Near the entrance, at the base of a column, is perhaps the most famous piece of graffiti in Greece: BYRON. He carved it during his Grand Tour, then returned years later to fight in the Greek War of Independence — and die for it.

Below the cliff is where Aegeus is said to have stood, watching for his son’s ship. Seeing black sails, he threw himself into the sea. The Aegean has carried his name ever since.

On a clear morning, you can see Kea and Kythnos out in the haze.

This is what the morning tour has that the sunset tour does not.

There is a beach immediately below the cape, and from the water you look up at a fifth-century BC temple standing on the rock above. In summer, the sea here is clear and cool, and at eleven in the morning there is often no one in it.

Then lunch. There is a café and restaurant at the site itself, and tavernas along the coast. Fish, a table at the water’s edge, and no need to be anywhere else.