7 Day Tour Of The Peloponnese, Delphi & Meteora

Overnight: Nafplio

An hour out of Athens we stop at the Corinth Canal, the cut that separates mainland Greece from the Peloponnese — the city of Corinth sat astride this isthmus, holding the land route north–south and the sea route between the Aegean and the Ionian.

We continue to Ancient Corinth, one of the wealthiest cities of the Greek and Roman world. In the Roman Forum stand the temples, colonnades, fountains and marble-paved streets — and the bema, the raised rostrum where Saint Paul was brought to trial before the proconsul Gallio, in the mid-1st century AD. Above it all rises the citadel of Acrocorinth.

Lunch is at an award-winning family producer of extra virgin olive oil, working the local Manaki variety, with a farm-to-table tour and tasting.

The day ends in Nafplio, the first capital of liberated Greece in 1829. The evening is yours.

UNESCO site: Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus (1988) · Overnight: Nafplio

The morning starts with the Archaeological Museum of Nafplio, its highlight the Dendra Panoply, one of the oldest surviving suits of full body armour in the world. Then Palamidi, the Venetian fortress on the 216-metre hill above the town: eight bastions, built between 1711 and 1714 in an astonishing three years, and lost to the Ottomans in 1715, the year after they were finished.

We then cross to the Argolid’s Saronic coast for a seaside lunch, before Epidaurus. The sanctuary of Asklepios was antiquity’s foremost healing centre — it includes the abaton, where pilgrims slept in the hope of a healing dream, and the theatre: 4th century BC, still in use, and with acoustics that carry an ordinary speaking voice from the orchestra to all 14,000 seats. UNESCO inscribed it in 1988.

A second night in Nafplio — well earned in a town this good.

UNESCO site: Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns (1999) · Overnight: Dimitsana

The morning belongs to Mycenae, the citadel of Agamemnon. We walk the Lion Gate, the Grave Circles where Schliemann found his gold, the palace, and the cyclopean walls — stone blocks so large that later Greeks assumed the Cyclopes had raised them. Nearby stands the Treasury of Atreus, the finest of the beehive tombs. The visit ends at the archaeological museum. UNESCO inscribed Mycenae in 1999, together with Tiryns.

Then we head into the Arcadian mountains to Dimitsana, a stone village on a ridge above the Lousios Gorge. Here you can visit the Open-Air Water Power Museum — watermills and the gunpowder mills that armed the fighters of 1821 — or the cliff-side Prodromou Monastery, built flat into the rock face of the gorge, with an idyllic walk along the river. Overnight in the area.

UNESCO sites: Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae (1986) · Archaeological Site of Olympia (1989) · Overnight: Ancient Olympia

We drive up to Bassae, at 1,130 metres. The Temple of Apollo Epicurius was built here in the late 5th century BC by Iktinos, the architect of the Parthenon, and in 1986 it became the first Greek monument ever inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. (It stands under a protective tent during conservation works — fully visible from inside, but not the setting the photographs show.)

Then down to Ancient Olympia, at the meeting of the Alpheios and Kladeos rivers: the sanctuary of Zeus and the birthplace of the Olympic Games, held every four years from 776 BC until the late 4th century AD. We begin the visit today — the Temple of Zeus, the workshop of Pheidias, the Temple of Hera, the stadium — and finish it in the morning. Overnight in the area.

Overnight: Delphi

An early start to complete Ancient Olympia, including the site museum, which holds the Hermes of Praxiteles and the pediments of the Temple of Zeus.

On the way north we stop at Chlemoutsi, on a hilltop above the Ionian coast — one of the best-preserved Frankish castles in Greece, built between 1220 and 1223 by Geoffrey I of Villehardouin. Its hexagonal keep, vaulted halls and sweeping sea views make it the finest Crusader fortress in the country.

We cross the Gulf of Corinth on the Charilaos Trikoupis bridge and stop at Nafpaktos, its circular harbour still enclosed by the walls the Venetians raised in the 15th century. They called the town Lepanto: in October 1571 the Ottoman fleet sailed from this harbour to meet the Holy League out in the Gulf of Patras and was destroyed in an afternoon. From the coast the road climbs Mount Parnassos towards Delphi.

UNESCO site: Archaeological Site of Delphi (1987) · Overnight: Kalambaka

Delphi was the navel of the world, where two eagles released by Zeus from opposite ends of the earth were said to have met. For a thousand years no Greek city made a serious decision without consulting the Oracle. We walk the Sacred Way past the treasuries to the Temple of Apollo and out to the Tholos, then the museum, which holds the Charioteer — a bronze cast in 470 BC and recovered intact, his enamel eyes still in place.

In the afternoon the route turns north across Thessaly to Kalambaka, at the foot of Meteora.

UNESCO site: Meteora (1988) · Ends: Athens

Above Kalambaka rise the pillars of Meteora — the name means suspended in the air — a field of sandstone towers standing off the Thessalian plain. From Byzantine times monks climbed them precisely because nobody else could; of the original twenty-four monasteries, six remain in operation today. It is the second monastic centre of Greece after Mount Athos, and UNESCO inscribed it in 1988 as one of only three mixed cultural-and-natural sites in the country.

On the way back to Athens we stop at Thermopylae, at the monument to Leonidas. Here in 480 BC the Spartan king and a small force of Greeks held the narrow pass against the vast Persian army of Xerxes for three days before they were overwhelmed — a defeat that has stood for courage against impossible odds ever since.

Then the last stretch back to Athens.