6 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. It explains Corinth itself: the city sat astride the 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, declared the first capital of liberated Greece in 1829. The evening is yours — the sea wall, the cobbled lanes of the old town, and more tavernas than you can work through in one night.

UNESCO sites: Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns (1999) · Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus (1988) · Overnight: Nafplio

The morning belongs to Mycenae, the citadel of Agamemnon and the capital of the civilisation Homer wrote about. 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, a dry-laid vault whose span went unmatched in Europe for the next fifteen hundred years. The visit ends at the archaeological museum. UNESCO inscribed Mycenae in 1999, together with Tiryns.

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 — set among pine-clad hills, 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.

Back to Nafplio for the night.

Overnight: Ancient Olympia

The morning starts with the Archaeological Museum of Nafplio, whose collection runs from the Palaeolithic to the Roman period — 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. The view runs the length of the Argolic Gulf.

After lunch, the road runs west across the Peloponnese to Ancient Olympia, where we spend the night.

UNESCO site: Archaeological Site of Olympia (1989) · Overnight: Delphi

The morning is given 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 walk the Temple of Zeus — once home to the gold-and-ivory statue that was one of the Seven Wonders — the workshop of Pheidias where it was made, the Temple of Hera, and the stadium itself. The site museum holds the Hermes of Praxiteles and the pediments of the Temple of Zeus.

In the afternoon we leave the Peloponnese by its western end, crossing the Charilaos Trikoupis bridge over the Rio–Antirrio strait — 2.9 km of cable-stayed span, opened in 2004. On the far shore lies Nafpaktos, its small 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, off the Echinades islands, and was destroyed in an afternoon.

From the coast the road climbs the southern slopes of Mount Parnassos, heading for 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 on its terrace below, 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 the plain of Thessaly to Kalambaka, at the foot of the rocks 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 straight off the Thessalian plain. From Byzantine times monks climbed them precisely because nobody else could, and built on the summits; 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. They were defeated in the end — betrayed by a mountain path — but the stand bought the Greek cities time, and it has stood for courage against impossible odds ever since.

Then the last stretch back to Athens.