Half Day Cape Sounio (Morning)

Seventy kilometres of coast road south from the city, worth the drive on its own: Glyfada, Vouliagmeni, Varkiza, the beaches and the marinas — and then the road empties and it is 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, in the campaign in which Xerxes forced the pass at Thermopylae and then razed Athens itself. What stands now replaced it — 444 to 440 BC, in Pericles’ building programme, the same years as the Parthenon.

It is Doric, and it was designed for this cliff: thirty-four columns originally, cut slimmer than the Doric norm — possibly against the wind on an exposed cape — from local Agrileza marble. Fifteen are still standing after two and a half thousand years of salt and earthquakes. Inside stood a bronze Poseidon over six metres tall.

Near the entrance, at the base of a column, is the most famous graffiti in Greece: BYRON. He carved it on his Grand Tour, and came back years later to fight in the Greek War of Independence and die for it.

Below the cliff is where Aegeus stood watching for his son’s ship, saw black sails, and jumped. The sea 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 and 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 on the rock. In summer the sea here is clear and cold and there is nobody in it at eleven in the morning.

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 the whole afternoon still to come.